Venus
by Abbey Well
Summary: "Eve stared at the picture, drinking in every detail, ignoring the generic headline and short article that were placed below it. This amazing woman was why she was here. She smiled excitedly." Poison Ivy x OC.
1. A Quick Note Before We Begin

A quick note before we begin:

I have never written any Batman fanfiction before. Some of the characters' behaviour may be a little different to the ordinary Batman canon, or I may use elements from various different interpretations, but I hope I will be able to do them justice.

Please feel free to read, review, and offer constructive or destructive criticism. I welcome your opinions with open arms.

Any and all Batman characters used in this story are property of DC Comics.


	2. Chapter 1

"Ah, the man of the hour. I've been looking to introduce you two all evening! Eve, this is Bruce Wayne. Mr Wayne, this is Eve Carter; her research and experiments will benefit greatly from your generous donation to the GCSI."

Dr Phillip Mortimer looked on benevolently as the two strangers exchanged nods of greeting. Eve cleared her throat and held out her hand. "Mr Wayne – I've heard so much about you."

"Not everything, I hope," said the billionaire, briefly flashing her that million-watt smile that was portrayed in the Gotham Gazette's social section at least three times a week. "And please, call me Bruce." He took hold of her outstretched hand and kissed it.

Against her best efforts, Eve couldn't help blushing. She was new to Gotham City, having transferred there from Chicago barely a week before. Thankfully, Mortimer had taken her under his wing and helped her get to know everybody he knew, but she'd never have guessed one of them to be Bruce Wayne, of all people. "Oh, err…thank you, Bruce. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine. Might I say, Eve, you look very beautiful this evening. I'm ashamed to say I wouldn't have thought you to be a scientist."

Again with the blushing! Embarrassed, she looked down at the dress she was wearing in an attempt to hide her red face. Granted, it was quite low cut, much more than it had appeared on the dummy in the shop window, when she'd bought it for the sole purpose of being the dress she wore to fancy events. Still, it clung in all the right places, and it was black, so if anybody spilt their champagne on her it wouldn't matter. She wished she could have made some kind of snappy comeback, but Bruce had already excused himself politely and walked away to touch some bimbo on the shoulder, making her squeal with delight and throw her arms around him.

Eve raised an eyebrow. She's hated the idea of even coming to this gala thing ever since Mortimer had mentioned it to her, two days ago now. It was basically a big fancy event celebrating Wayne Enterprises funding the GCSI, and while she greatly appreciated the chance to do her research thanks to the funding, she couldn't help thinking there was no need for the theatrics. She shrugged to herself and started to walk aimlessly through the glamorous crowds, occasionally greeting someone she vaguely knew with a nod and a smile. She wanted to go home, and thankfully nobody tried to stop her from leaving. She collected her coat from the cloakroom, gave the doorman a small smile and a nod of thanks, and walked out into the cold night.

Normally, most women would think twice about walking alone through the dark streets of Gotham City, but Eve didn't care. She knew how to defend herself. She drew her coat more tightly around her shoulders and walked casually down the street, knowing it would only be a few minutes before she could shut the door of her cosy apartment and collapse on the bed with a good book. Her first genuine smile of the evening spread across her face at the thought. Eve's apartment was nothing special; small but perfectly formed, she liked to say. It had everything she needed – bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, small living room area – and that was enough. That said, she had attempted to personalise it; there were a few pictures up, she'd painted the walls of the kitchen a pleasant pale green, and the bathroom had a shower curtain that resembled a tropical rainforest. It was the bedroom, however, that had received the majority of the renovation and had become her sanctuary.

She couldn't wait to get into bed and relax as soon as she got in the door. She threw her coat and stupid sparkly evening bag to the floor, kicked off her heels and padded into the kitchen in her stockinged feet to make herself a cup of tea. While it was brewing, she went to her bedroom to change.

Looking in the mirror as she removed her makeup and jewellery, she made a face. Without the vast amounts of foundation, blusher and eyeliner, her face was fairly nondescript. Pale skin, free from any major blemishes; a small nose that turned up slightly at the tip; blue eyes surrounded by long black lashes. She could have been anyone. "Beautiful? Wayne needs his eyes tested." She sighed and turned away from her dressing table, unzipping the slinky black evening gown and letting it fall into a heap on the floor. She would hang it up later. Reaching into the drawer of her bedside table, she pulled out an oversized t-shirt and put it on over her head, freeing her hair from its sparkling entrapments and sending it tumbling down over her shoulders in the process.

Once she was changed, a sudden wave of fatigue swept over her and she willingly crawled into her bed, settling down and falling asleep within minutes. Her dreams were tinged with green.

She awoke promptly at six am the next morning, as usual, and got straight out of bed to do some stretches, as usual. Her body flowed easily through all the yoga positions she knew by heart, getting her blood pumping, waking her up. Refreshed and energised, she opened the bedroom curtains and gently brushed her fingertips over the mimosa pudica, or touch-me-not plant, that sat beside her bed. It was her favourite plant out of all the ones she kept in her home, of which there were quite a few; she loved the way that even the slightest touch to the leaves caused them to ripple closed down the pinnae, lying flat and making the pretty little fern turn into what looked like a few prickly twigs in seconds. She smiled and left the plant to its own devices, heading to the kitchen to make some breakfast, tipping the cold brown tea that she'd started making the night before down the sink.

As she sat at the table hungrily devouring a bowl of cereal, Eve switched her laptop on and went straight to the news pages to look at the headlines. There was a bit about the GCSI gala the night before – more sucking up to Bruce Wayne – some sports things, some financials. She clicked through the online newspaper and suddenly drew in a short breath.

There she was – the other reason she had wanted to transfer to Gotham, the one nobody knew about. It was nothing to do with superior botanical experimentation facilities.

Poison Ivy.

She'd first encountered Poison Ivy when a news story had reached Chicago about five months previous – the woman had gone on an ecological rampage, appearing in any city that harboured factories or businesses that were harmful to the environment. After each attack, she had disappeared again for a few days, only to re-emerge somewhere else with the same intent. The papers had been full of it, speculation and fear had been high, and Eve had been fascinated. In all her years of botanical study, the possibility of being able to control plants, of bestowing upon them something like sentience, had never even occurred to her. She had been intrigued from the word go, immensely attracted to the idea of studying Ivy, learning her behaviour, how she managed to maintain the balance of human and plant, how her incredible powers worked. When the opportunity of transferring to Gotham had risen in her department, she had been the first to apply.

She hadn't told a single person about this, not even Mortimer, and she wanted to keep it that way; if she was going to track Ivy down, then the less people knew about it the better. She knew they would only caution her, warn her about Ivy's criminal activities, and while she had always considered that, she also felt that there was another side to her; a much more interesting side. And now here she was, once again in Gotham, wreaking her own particular brand of botanical havoc. Whoever the photographer had been for the story had managed to get a killer shot, showing Ivy leaping gracefully from a window that was easily four storeys up. Her arms were extended back, her toes pointed forwards as she anticipated her landing on a large vine that sprouted from under the tarmac. The police spotlights illuminated the intent expression on her face, her scantily-clad green body and streaming scarlet hair; she looked astonishing. Eve stared at the picture, drinking in every detail, ignoring the generic headline and short article that were placed below it. This amazing woman was why she was here. She smiled excitedly.


	3. Chapter 2

Five weeks. Five long weeks had passed since Ivy had last made the news. The city had moved on, and Eve had settled into her new position at the GCSI, getting on with her colleagues and making great progress with her work; she'd been out a few times with friends she'd made, to dinner or the theatre; she was well-liked in the workplace and on actual speaking terms with the waitresses in the café where she bought her breakfast pastry every morning. But, despite all that, she couldn't help feeling like something was missing.

She was pondering this as she finished up work for the day. The list of objectives she'd made for herself that morning had all been completed early, leaving her with at least an hour before she'd had to leave. She'd had to invent stuff for herself to do in order to pass the time, never being one to clock out early if it meant securing an extra hour's pay. She'd tidied her desk, sorted out all the post in her pigeon hole, answered or deleted her emails accordingly…and then she'd run out of things to do. Feeling oddly drained, she headed to the women's locker rooms to change. Humming to herself, she took off her regulation lab clothes and pulled on a pair of jeans and a thick jumper. She splashed her face with some tap water and dried it on the towel hanging next to the sink, then gathered her files together and tucked them into her bag.

Some of her colleagues, particularly the male ones, joked about her literally taking her work home with her, but she'd rather that than take one of them. Her work with the plants was a blessing – they didn't answer back. They were co-operative, and beautiful, and highly unlikely to ditch her for someone else. From her experience of men, and women, in the past, humans were much more unreliable.

She was the only one left in the building by that time – the foyer echoed with her footsteps as she headed out into the cold night. The sky was dark and cloudy and the streets were illuminated a pale orange. She shrugged her jacket on and freed her hair from the ponytail she wore before setting off down the road.

The first hint that something wasn't quite right was when she tripped over a lump in the sidewalk. It hadn't been there when she'd walked to work that morning – the ground was broken. As she moved on, Eve saw small green tendrils protruding from underneath the tarmac, forcing themselves up through cracks that grew bigger and more frequent the further she walked. Treading carefully, she continued on her way, until it seemed like everywhere she looked there were new bright green shoots invading the city streets. She couldn't help thinking that she was heading towards the epicentre of something huge. Against her better judgement, she kept walking.

What had once been quiet streets only seconds before suddenly became loud and chaotic – people were shouting and screaming, someone was bellowing through a megaphone, car horns honked incessantly, and above it all a thunderous helicopter dominated the sky. Apprehensive yet intrigued, Eve hurried on. She turned a final corner and stopped in her tracks, spellbound.

Supported high above the ground amid a clutch of enormous vines stood Poison Ivy. She was laughing as if she were having the time of her life, shooting vicious tendrils in all directions. A huge dark shape flitted around her, and as Eve's eyes adjusted to the glare of the spotlight she recognised that dark shape as the Batman.

Immediately she started to run. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she pushed through the throng of people all standing open-mouthed, eyes fixed on the fight overhead. She reached the police barrier and lent forward over it, straining her eyes. She had heard so much about the various exploits of Ivy, but this was the first time she had ever seen her in reality – and she was spectacular. She and the Batman moved around and between each other with an easy grace, neither of them touching the other, each one just fast enough to avoid being caught out. All the while they were locked in this deadly choreography, Ivy was smiling and laughing flirtatiously, relishing the adrenaline and the tension between the two of them. The crowd below oohed and aahed and gasped and screamed as the two fighters lashed out to within a hair's breadth of one another. Eve held her breath as Ivy pinwheeled and cavorted amongst the gargantuan vines, never quite letting the Batman touch her. At one point she blew him a kiss, and it was obvious even from Eve's limited viewpoint that she was teasing him, leading him on, encouraging him to follow her on a wild goose chase.

Evidently, the Batman realised this soon after. Something bright and black flew from his hand and Ivy was suddenly floating in midair – she hung as if from an invisible wire for what seemed like an age before falling suddenly.

"No!"

Almost before she even knew what she was doing, Eve screamed. Her arms outstretched, desperate to get past the officers that held her back, she watched in horror as Ivy fell. Her terrified eyes were glued to the graceful green figure swan-diving towards the tarmac – and then the figure turned. Ivy's bright gaze caught Eve's and time seemed to slow down as she winked and her glossy green lips slid into a smirk.

An enormous vine erupted from under the tarmac right in front of the police barriers; thrown by the sudden force, Eve and several other bystanders were flung into the air and landed hard on the ground. The vine rocketed up towards the sky and Ivy met it, leaping easily onto the trunk and staying crouched as the vine changed its course and headed off down the street, spreading rapidly across the ground and around the buildings. The Batman swung into hot pursuit, and the crowd watched in awe as the two combatants disappeared into the distance among the flashing lights and sirens.

From her position sprawled on the ground, breathless and awestruck, Eve could only see a fragment of the action before Ivy and the Batman were out of sight. She stood up shakily, her arm being supported by a burly stranger standing to her right. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, hear her breathing coming in shallow gasps. All the lights and colours around her seemed too bright, the contrast between them too distinct. Her brain couldn't quite come to terms with what she had just witnessed.

"Ma'am? Are you alright?"

"Is she in shock?"

"What happened? Is she hurt?"

"Ma'am? Hello?"

Voices whirled around Eve's head. The strong hand on her arm was replaced with a gentler touch that guided her through the throng of fascinated onlookers. Somebody coaxed her to sit down, then knelt down in front of her. After blinking a few times her vision returned to normal, and she recognised the crouched figure as Commissioner James Gordon. His mouth slid up into a reassuring smile.

"What's your name?" He spoke in a tone that was somehow comforting, fatherly and authoritative all in one. As he spoke to her, a paramedic started cleaning and dressing several cuts on her hands and legs.

"Eve…Evelyn Carter." Her own voice sounded incredibly small and far away. She shivered and as if from nowhere the paramedic placed a blanket over her shoulders.

The Commissioner was looking at her with blatant curiousity. The look he gave her was meaningful, and she knew why. Everyone in Gotham knew about how closely the Commissioner and the GCPD worked with Batman, despite the obvious rancour from the mayor's office. Gordon only had to say a word to the vigilante about what she had done, how she had screamed when Ivy had been in danger…

"I'm not going to go into what I just saw," he said eventually, "but if I were you, Miss Carter, I'd be more careful around certain inhabitants of this city."

Eve nodded slowly. Her head was buzzing with thoughts and possible replies, but the Commissioner had already stood up and was walking away to personally check on all the other injured people – he was nice like that. Eve hugged her blanket around herself and tried to slow her breathing and her heart, which was still pumping wildly inside her chest. She hadn't done anything wrong, not really, she told herself. It had been instinctual, to reach out and try to help the one she…loved? No…she couldn't be in love with Ivy… The thought made her sit up straighter and frown. It couldn't be true, surely. Ivy, Poison Ivy, was a wanted criminal, a…supervillainess, for want of a better word. It would be stupid to get involved with her in anything more than a scientific relationship, if that in itself was even possible.

Maybe she was just being an idiot. She should forget this foolish mission and get on with a new life of friends, dinner parties and scientific progress. She was the new girl in Gotham City – in spite of its criminal underground, thanks to a certain Mr Wayne the city was improving all the time, and anyone else in her position would have jumped at the chance to savour every opportunity that came her way. Her work was groundbreaking; she knew that, Mortimer knew that, and he was always reassuring her that she would go far. She just needed to set her head on straight and forget about trying to forge any kind of link to Ivy.

But Eve could not deny how her heart had leapt when Ivy had looked her way.


	4. Chapter 3

After insisting that Eve take a day off after her 'ordeal' for recuperative purposes, Mortimer was now working her harder than ever, probably in hopes that she would clinch some sort of prize in the coming months. The extra hours weren't entirely without choice, though; Eve was putting in more and more time after work each day to finish her new pet project. In between, she had been scouring the newspapers and online articles even more frequently than usual – sometimes during work hours too, sneakily using the lab computers to research Ivy's background – in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the elusive object of her fascination. In over a week, nothing new had turned up. It seemed Ivy was lying low for the time being.

Down in her lab once again, Eve stood back from the workbench and stretched her arms above her head, cracking her knuckles. Splayed on the table in front of her was a forlorn-looking cutting of nepenthes attenboroughii, a carnivorous plant – the rest of it was growing under controlled conditions in Eve's special indoor greenhouse. It didn't look particularly happy to be sliced and diced, but then who would?

She glanced at the clock absently, and its cheerily painted hands informed her that she had been working for three long hours after everyone else had left. It would be dark outside, a welcome change from the buzzing fluorescent lights that made her squint up her eyes after a while. She yawned and got up, slowly and methodically clearing everything away and cleaning up the workbench. A long, hot bath was definitely in order – and maybe she'd order some takeout to treat herself. It felt like a pizza kind of night.

When she had changed and said goodnight to Russell, the friendly security guard who always had a smile for her, she stepped out into the cool night air and breathed deeply. Staying cooped up in her lab might help her work progress and earn Mortimer's approval, but she was more like her plants than he realised – she needed air, space to breathe and stretch and move. The extra hours were necessary, but if he'd had his way she would have been working flat out through the night, which wouldn't do anybody any favours.

She had just turned onto her street when she felt a chill run down her spine, like someone was watching her. Instinctively, she clenched her fists and took on a defensive stance, tensing her limbs, ready to bolt or defend herself as the situation called for it. "Come out," she called into the darkness. She didn't like not being able to see people. "I know you're there."

"You shouldn't say things like that," said a deep growling voice from somewhere in the shadows above her head. "You never know who might take you up on it; especially in Gotham."

Eve gave a start, and another chill ran through her as she realised who was speaking. "I'm…new in town. Ish. And I can look after myself."

"Evidently." There was a sound like a rush of wings and Eve automatically stepped back as a huge dark shadow of a man appeared on the street in front of her. He glared down at her, his eyes only just visible under the instantly recognisable cowl. The Batman (in her mind, he always required the use of the definite article) stood before her, tall and intimidating and blocking her path. She didn't know what to do. She weighed up the options in her mind – false bravado prevailed. "Have you been following me?" She looked up into his face and forced herself to make eye contact.

If he was surprised at her stoicism, he didn't show it. He didn't show anything, in fact, but she supposed that was all part of the ensemble. "I haven't been following you, Miss Carter," he replied gruffly. She didn't question how he knew her name – there were several ways he could have found it out, and they didn't call him the World's Greatest Detective for nothing. "I've been following someone else; you got yourself involved. And I would advise you," he continued, his scowl deepening (if that was even possible), "to stay away from this. It's not a good place for anyone."

"Not even you?" Eve knew exactly what he was talking about – she wasn't stupid – and she felt a certain amount of chagrin at his belief that she was nothing but a silly little girl who had wandered into the lion's den and wanted to pet the kitties.

He grunted. "I can handle Ivy." He stepped forward suddenly, backing Eve against a wall and leaning in so his eyes burned into hers. "I saw you – the way you screamed for her. I've been keeping track of your…reading material too. You're a smart woman, Miss Carter. You didn't come to Gotham for the labs at the Science Institute, I know that. It's obvious that you have an ulterior motive, but it's not going to lead you down a good path. I'm telling you; stay away from Ivy."

Eve stared at him, trying to think of something to say – a denial, a protest, an objection to the fact that he had apparently been checking up on her internet history – then she blinked and the Batman was gone in a ripple of black fabric. She searched the shadows for a trace of movement, of anything, but he had completely disappeared. Scowling at the darkness, she wrapped her arms across her chest and carried on for home.

Her apartment was cold when she opened the door, and she immediately saw why – the living room window was wide open, the curtains billowing in the wind. She hurried over and closed it quickly, then span around and looked over the room. She had closed the window that morning when she'd left for work, which meant somebody else had opened it since. Nothing was noticeably out of place, but she knew from unfortunate experience that that didn't necessarily mean nothing had been stolen.

Cautiously, she walked into the kitchen and switched on the light. Nothing. Her cup and bowl from breakfast were still in the sink, her pot plants untouched. The microwave, stereo, and small television set were all there too. She pulled out a knife from the block next to the stove and continued into the bathroom. Still nothing, except a moth that flapped around erratically when she pulled on the light cord. She checked behind the door and behind the shower curtain, but nobody was there and nothing was different. That left her bedroom.

Nervously, she gripped the door handle and slowly pushed the door open. Nobody jumped out at her, which was a plus. She crept in and across the carpet, checking behind the door again, then under the bed and in her wardrobe. The bed was made, the wardrobe was tidy. None of her jewellery was gone either, although that wasn't such a surprise as it wasn't really worth that much, and all the research notes she had left in a folder in a locked drawer of the dressing table were present and correct. If someone had been in her home, then they had either taken something she wouldn't notice until weeks or months into the future when she went looking for it, or they had just taken a casual stroll around the rooms before leaving again. She frowned and turned away to go back into the kitchen and start dinner, and that was when she saw it.

There was an ivy leaf next to the mimosa pudica on her bedside table.


	5. Chapter 4

Eve turned up the collar of her coat and strode forward against the wind. Her hair had freed itself from its ponytail and was flying around her head like Medusa's snakes on a caffeine high. She was heading to Robinson Park – it didn't take a genius to work out that if Ivy wasn't in Arkham, where she should have been, then there was only really one place in Gotham with a sufficient amount of plant life to make her feel at home. And Eve was something of a genius when it came to plants. Like her partial namesake, she had been too tempted by the potential discovery of knowledge to ignore the signal of the ivy leaf. Deep down, she knew she was doing something incredibly stupid – going against the advice of the Batman in any situation was a bad idea – but her feet kept walking, taking her down familiar streets on a route she had trodden many times already. In her pockets, clutched tightly in her hands to offer her some comfort, were a torch, a tazer and a small utility knife, just in case.

Only when she reached the gates of Robinson Park did she hesitate. They were still open, even at that time of night, but as she looked past them the park was black and uninviting. She swallowed. What was she doing? She had no idea how to handle a situation like this; her field of expertise was plants, true, but the type of plant that stayed in its pot and wasn't likely to attack you any time soon. If she continued on this mad quest, there was a significant chance that she wouldn't make it into work the next day…

But, then…Ivy had left her a message. What it meant, Eve did not know, but there must have been some kind of reasoning behind tracking her down, breaking into her apartment and leaving only a tantalising clue. A message had been left, and she needed to find the messenger.

Eve pulled the torch from her cavernous pocket and switched it on, sending a penetrating beam of light into the blanket of darkness before her. The moon was out, and a small sprinkling of stars, but they barely helped. She took a deep breath and stepped into the park, walking purposefully in an attempt to convince herself that she knew what she was doing. Each tree looked the same as the next one, and every junction of path led into unappealing darkness. An owl swooped out of a tree, screeching at the intruder, and Eve jumped and screamed – even in loud panic, her voice sounded unnaturally small in the vast expanse of the park.

She didn't see another human being as she walked. It was eerily quiet, as if the general noises of Gotham on a Friday night had been left at the gate and weren't allowed to enter. In a strange way, she was starting to enjoy the peace and quiet, and would have enjoyed it more if there hadn't been a niggling feeling in her stomach that she was walking into danger. She kept to a straight line, directly into the heart of the park; despite having been there several times before during daylight hours, she didn't want to deviate too much. Her sense of direction was not one of her strong points.

She kept going, shivering slightly in the wind, and as she walked she began to hear noises. Splashes, the trickle of a stream… Then a voice, a woman's voice, in the soft croon of a lover. Eve paused, wondering if she was suddenly going to intrude on a couple's private skinny-dipping session. The voice kept on talking in soft, sensual tones, but there was no spoken reply, only a rustling sound. Intrigued, she switched off her torch and crept slowly forwards, anticipation rising inside her. She felt her way forwards, her vision gradually adjusting in the dim light of the moon, and then she suddenly had to stop herself from gasping.

There was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen – Poison Ivy, naked but for water droplets and her wet hair splayed across her breasts, bathing in the pale moonlight. She looked like a stunning marble statue, her eyes closed, her lips turned up in a languid smile. A vine had draped itself over her shoulders and was in the process of entwining itself into her hair, crowning her brow with green. As Eve watched, the vine slid down and caressed Ivy's cheek, and she in turn stroked it with her long, elegant fingers. It looked for all the world as if the vine was telling her a secret. Maybe it was, Eve thought, from her position crouched in a damp bush. It was well known that Ivy could speak to the plants, as it were; something that Eve had been fascinated by since she had learnt of this amazing woman's existence. This was an incredible opportunity, if she could only go about it in the right way – she felt like Actaeon, spying on the goddess Artemis as she bathed, and knowing full well that if she was spotted she would get much more than an indignant shout and an angry expression.

Suddenly, without any warning, Ivy turned her head and looked straight at her. Eve ducked, her heart in her mouth, and hoped that she had not been noticed. Even if Ivy had invited her here, she highly doubted that she would have wanted to be seen in this way.

The seconds ticked by silently, and there seemed to be no sign of anything happening. No shout, no rage, no movement, nothing. Perhaps Eve had gotten away with it. When she let herself breathe again, she sank onto all fours and crawled across the damp grass, peeking surreptitiously around the edge of the bush, chewing her lip nervously. She was physically shaking; whether to do with cold, fear or adrenaline, she didn't know. Something in Ivy's eyes, unguarded and raw, had reminded her that she wasn't dealing with a normal woman – Ivy wasn't human. She may have been once, but now she was a goddess, practically Mother Nature incarnate, and while it would have been a dream come true to be able to get close to such a being, sneaking up on her in the middle of the night not the right way to go about it.

Mercifully, Ivy had now turned around and it certainly seemed as though she hadn't spotted Eve's little peeping Tom act. Eve swallowed and tried to calm down.

Something tightened around her ankle.

Oh. Oh…no. Ivy could control plants. The entire park was full of them! What had she been thinking?! Why hadn't she even considered this before? Eve swung around, pulling her knife out of her coat pocket and stabbed at the encroaching vine that had sneakily wrapped itself around her leg. It reeled away, wriggling like a dying fish on the grass, and she took the opportunity to scramble to her feet.

Suddenly, the plants were everywhere; roots bursting up through the soil, leafy branches reaching down from treetops, incongruous vines seemingly appearing from every direction, all of them heading towards her. Eve tried to fight them off, stabbing and shocking and slapping them away over and over again, but they just kept coming.

One latched onto her arm, sticking sharp thorns into her skin so she yelled in pain and dropped her knife, which disappeared into the long grass. She struggled to attack the thorny creeper, clawing at it with her nails, but all she succeeded in doing was making her fingers bleed until her free hand was caught and held fast. Earth-stained roots erupted from underground, curled themselves around her ankles and began to pull. She cried out again as her feet sank into the earth, thrashing about fruitlessly. A sneaky tendril caught itself up in her hair and started to wrap itself around her face, covering her mouth and nose and muffling her shouts of fear. She had severely underestimated the power she would be facing. Blinded by admiration and intrigue, she had walked into danger like an insect into a flytrap, and now all Eve could do was watch helplessly as she was pulled underground and the earth closed over her head.


	6. Chapter 5

When Eve opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that she was hanging in midair, tightly wrapped in vines. The second thing was that a long way below her was the gaping mouth of an enormous pitcher plant, except this one had long, sharp teeth and seemed to be regarding her with a hungry expression, despite not having eyes. Immediately, she screamed and started struggling.

A smooth, velvety voice emanated from somewhere behind Eve's head. "Don't do that. You're winding him up."

Eve tried to see what was going on behind her, and was suddenly lifted higher into the air and spun around so she could see her captor. Poison Ivy, enthroned on a bed of thorns and roses, glaring at her with a stony expression. For a moment, Eve couldn't speak – she was overcome by fear, shock, and the inherently dangerous beauty of the woman before her.

"What were you doing, spying on me?" Ivy demanded, her soft lips curled into an ugly sneer. "Tell me, or I'll feed you to the pitcher."

Eve was surprised to discover that her tongue wouldn't work; it felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed and tried to stop shaking so much. "I..I..I wasn't spying on you," she said at last, in a voice so timid it was practically a whisper.

It was a blatant lie, and both of them knew it. Ivy narrowed her eyes and reached out one hand. Obligingly, the vines trapping Eve brought her closer until she and Ivy were barely a foot away from each other. Ivy wrapped her long, slender fingers around Eve's chin and held her head in place so she was fixed with the full ferocity of her glare. It was both stunningly beautiful and terrifyingly fierce to behold – for that moment, Ivy didn't look like there was an ounce of humanity left in her. She was cold, angry, and looked like one wrong word would cause her to drop Eve into the jaws of the waiting plant without a second thought.

"You _were_ spying on me, meat," she said. The tone of her voice was what Eve imagined a lioness would sound like, speaking to her already doomed prey. "Now tell me _why_."

It didn't occur to Eve to mention the leaf she had found on her bedside table. Instead, she struggled to keep her voice steady as she tried to explain. "I don't…I don't want to hurt you," she began slowly. Ivy raised her eyebrows but didn't respond. Eve took this as a sign that the possibility of death-by-pitcher-plant might be lessening, and carried on before she completely lost her nerve. "I've researched you, I wanted to study you. I'm a…scientist."

She knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to say; Ivy's expression transformed into a vicious scowl, and she pulled Eve even closer to hiss her next words into her ear. "I _hate_ scientists."

Before she could stammer another word, Eve had been released from her bonds and she was falling towards the hungry plant, which opened its trap wider like an eager puppy waiting for a treat. She screamed, long and loud, squeezing her eyes shut so she couldn't see what, in that moment, she believed to be the inevitable.

The fall was over as abruptly as it had begun. Yet another vine caught Eve around the waist, winding her; she hung in mid-air for a second or two, and then with a sudden lurch she was thrown to the ground. Her limbs were stiff and sore, and she slowly sat up and hugged her knees, shivering and still not wanting to open her eyes. There was a rustling noise somewhere nearby, followed by soft footsteps making their way towards her. She froze in fear.

"It's you." Ivy's voice was curious, and confused. "I remember you."

"Please…" Eve whispered, terrified. "Please, don't kill me…" She could feel herself shaking, feel the tears running down her cheeks, the goosebumps on her skin, the dirt and blood under her nails; she knew how desperate she must look. Her mind was racing with possibilities of what was going to happen to her, and admonishments to herself for even thinking about coming to the park in the first place. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I came here, I didn't want…"

"Stop."

The word was like a pinpoint of light in swirling darkness, direct and clear, and Eve focused on it, giving herself something to hold on to even if it might end up leading to a worse fate. She felt cool fingertips cupping her chin, and she stiffened as her head was raised to face something that she couldn't see.

"Open your eyes." Ivy's voice wasn't demanding, nor did it seem angry anymore; it wasn't a command, more of an instruction, as if she was talking to a child. Slowly, Eve steeled herself and opened her tearful eyes.

The world was blurred, seen through liquid, until she blinked and it all snapped into focus. It was dark on the edges of her vision, and everything was green. As she finally took a proper look around, Eve could see that she was inside a sort of dome made of intertwining branches, full of lush plantlife, tropical plants that shouldn't even have been able to grow in that part of the world, let alone flourish and thrive. The ground was carpeted with thick grass and tiny wildflowers, soft and springy to the touch. Ivy had made a rainforest in the middle of Gotham City, a hidden paradise where she could live peacefully and undisturbed, the environment of which was entirely hers to command. Eve was stunned into silence, now a mixture of terrified and awestruck.

Ivy herself was stood in front of the trembling woman on the ground, looking statuesque and beautiful, somehow still standing out against everything else despite being so similar. The expression on her face was serious, but at least she didn't look murderous anymore. She looked the same way Eve imagined herself to look when she was trying to understand the results of an experiment. Her lips parted and she spoke again, breaking the suffocating silence between them.

"So you're a scientist," she said slowly, as if she was working things out while she was speaking. "Why did you come here, to me? What do you want?"

Feeling small and dirty compared to the goddess before her, Eve nevertheless stood up on her shaky legs and tried to appear a bit more confident in her explanation. "I'm not from Gotham," she began. "I moved here from Chicago, to work at the GCSI. I'm a botanist."

Ivy didn't respond in any way, aggressive or otherwise, besides raising an eyebrow to encourage Eve to continue.

"Everyone thinks I moved here because Gotham has superior equipment to benefit my experiments, and they're kind of right…but mainly I came here for you. You _fascinate_ me," Eve said fervently, daring to give Ivy a small smile. "I've had this dream of being able to study you, and – and find out about you, how your abilities work, what made you this way…I would never share it with anyone, or, like, expose you to the world, or anything," she added nervously. "I wouldn't hurt you either, I swear on my life. Anything we decided to do would be absolutely on your terms, I just…I just want to know more about you." She swallowed, wetting her lips with her tongue. "You're incredible."

There was a long moment where neither of them said anything, and Eve started to feel like something deadly was going to attack her again because of her impudence. Ivy was frowning at her.

"Scientific curiosity?" she said at last, and Eve let out a long breath that she hadn't realised she'd been holding in. "That's all this is?"

Eve nodded fervently, not daring to speak.

"You remind me of…well, me." The tiniest of smiles played around Ivy's mouth, and Eve dared to hope that she might have managed to talk her around. "Nothing happens unless I say it can."

"Absolutely," Eve burst out. "I…I would never do anything to hurt you or harm you in any way. I swear. Any experiments or – or tests, or anything, I carried out would be up to you."

"And nobody else would ever find out anything that you discovered?" There was a threat veiled beneath Ivy's words now, and her eyes had narrowed as she spoke.

"Nobody. On my life." Eve now had a rough idea of what Ivy was capable of, and she fully intended to never be on the receiving end of that again.

Ivy paused, as if she was afraid to say what was on her mind. "How do I know I can trust you?" she asked finally.

Eve frowned. The tone of her voice – it wasn't suspicious, like it had been, but more like she needed reassurance, like Ivy was afraid of what Eve might be planning to do and she needed to absolutely know that she could rely on her not to spread any discoveries around. It made Eve wonder about her words before – "I _hate_ scientists". There was obviously something there, something that Ivy didn't want to explain, something that had perhaps made her untrustworthy of people who wanted to try and understand her.

"I would never betray you," she said, and in that moment she realised the absolute truth of that statement. She could finally admit to herself, right there, even after Ivy had tried to kill her, that her feelings for the incredible woman went far beyond professionalism; she genuinely cared for her. It was scary and ridiculous and probably the stupidest thing that Eve had ever done, but it was true. She knew she would never tell anybody anything about what she might discover.

There was another long, long moment of silence between the two of them. Green eyes stared deep into blue, and the tension grew between the two women. Eve raised her eyebrows in a hesitant question, as if to ask, "What happens now?"

Ivy's response was to raise her hand to her lips and slowly blow a kiss, and the next thing Eve knew she was waking up on the ground by the entrance to Robinson Park, with the sun starting to rise and chase away the darkness to the east.


	7. Chapter 6

It all felt like a dream. A crazy, terrible, wonderful dream.

Over the next month or so, Eve spent her days in a state of barely contained anticipation, wanting, _needing_ to know if she would be summoned to Robinson Park. That was how it went; she would return home after work promptly, no more overtime, and there would some sign of Ivy wanting to see her – a leaf, a flower, occasionally a note that simply read 'Come tonight'. It was always Ivy summoning her, never the other way around. Eve had long since stopped questioning how Ivy managed to find her way into her apartment without ever being detected – the excitement when she saw each summons was too great. She would leave for the park as soon as she found the sign, bringing with her pens, pencils, notebooks and a Dictaphone, and as soon as she arrived, Ivy's plants would knock her out and take her to the rainforest dome that Ivy had made her domain. She never found out how to get there directly, and she respected Ivy's desire for privacy. It was no problem, really, not when the things she was discovering about the remarkable woman were so rich and intriguing.

At first it had only been basic questions, but Ivy had been surprisingly compliant, telling her about her past, and more about what she was capable of. Eve had watched, open-mouthed, at every demonstration of Ivy's power, and listened in fascination as she spoke about the processes that had made her the way she was – those were the only times when Ivy started to show her dark side, but even so, Eve's love and admiration for her only increased. She couldn't believe that Ivy was letting her into her world, that she was being trusted with this knowledge; it was like her past whimsical daydreams were all coming true.

Everything felt that way, now, and people, especially Mortimer, were starting to comment on how she didn't seem herself. She rarely ate, she couldn't focus on her work…her mind was fixed on Ivy. She knew there was a wealth of untapped information about the woman she was in love with, and she fervently hoped that she would be allowed the opportunity to discover it.

Unfortunately, everything else that wasn't related to Poison Ivy in any way was falling by the wayside.

As an unwelcome result of her lack of focus, Mortimer was waiting for her in her lab that morning, and she could tell he had something to say about it all. He was perched on a stool – which only served to draw attention to the fact that he was rather short, given that his feet didn't touch the floor – wearing all the correct protective gear and an added disgruntled expression. When she opened the door and stepped into the artificially lit room, he scrambled to his feet and strode over with an air of self-importance.

"Good morning, Eve," he said briskly. "How are you today?"

He was never usually this formal when he spoke to her, so Eve knew straight away that she was probably going to get a stern talking-to. She attempted to smile at him, and only just stopped it from transforming into a yawn. "I'm fine, Mortimer, thanks. What's up?"

"What's _up_, Eve, is that you seem to have entirely lost your desire to see this work completed." He placed one pudgy hand on Eve's arm and gave her a small shake to emphasise his point. "This is _groundbreaking_ research, Eve, and we both know that it couldn't be done by anybody but yourself –"

"I'm flattered," Eve interjected with a small smile.

"_But_, if you start letting things slide, where will we be then?" Mortimer was starting to get flustered, and he let go of Eve's arm and started pacing back and forth in front of her, gesticulating as he spoke. "We have a schedule to adhere to, Eve, and while I am willing to give you a bit more leniency than some others, purely because of your skills and…unique perspective, I can't be seen letting you get away with such slovenly behaviour as you've been exhibiting over the past few days."

Eve knew that Mortimer was her boss, and that she should have been nodding along with every single word he said. In fact, normally, she would have been. This time, though, she felt different, like he wasn't as important as he thought himself to be. He looked a bit silly, pacing before her, getting more and more exasperated, waving his hands around like a cartoon character. He looked _stupid_.

She blinked. Where had that come from? She had never thought that way about Mortimer before. He was a kind man, he'd helped her when she'd been new in town and unsure about everything, he'd helped her manifest her position at GCSI properly. Never before had any kind of malicious thought about him even crossed her mind.

_Meat. Man. Idiot._ Those words flashed through her thoughts next. She gave herself a little shake and made herself smile. "Phillip," she said conciliatorily, putting her hand on his shoulder, "don't worry. Trust me on this. I've got something...well, it's something big. I can't tell you about it, but it'll be worth it. I'll try not to let things slide anymore. I'm sorry I let that happen." She fixed him with her biggest winning smile and held her breath. Finally he smiled back, his cheeks turning pink.

Mortimer coughed and cleared his throat, and Eve kept her smile on her face, while silently willing him to leave; she needed to sit down and think. "Well, Eve, if that is the case, then I should probably leave you to it!" He smiled benignly again and waddled out of the lab.

Eve locked the door behind him and then sat down at her desk with a thump. "Thank God for that," she muttered to a potted cactus, the most recent addition to the ambience. "At least I got him off my back."

The cactus sat there silently, nonplussed. Eve raised an eyebrow at it, then rubbed her hands through her hair and sighed. She felt like she was going mad. Some of the thoughts that entered her head, when her mind wandered or when she was just drifting off to sleep, and just then, directed toward _Mortimer_, of all people…they were disturbing. She was starting to see the men and women around her as inferior, and she had a feeling it wasn't her mind in control of this opinion. What if Ivy had been messing with her head during their talks together? Eve knew something of her capacity for mind-control, with certain spores and pollens that she had developed over time – maybe it wasn't such a leap to make the connection between that knowledge and Eve's own experiences. Head in hands, Eve made the decision then and there to confront Ivy about it next time she saw her. She had agreed not to divulge any of Ivy's secrets, that was fine; she had _not_ agreed to having her mind manipulated beyond her control.

"Evelyn."

Eve jumped and almost fell off her stool. The voice that had spoken her name, softly but still surprisingly loud in the otherwise silent room, was coming from the cactus, which had suddenly burst out of its pot, grown three times its normal size, and was bearing something resembling the face of Poison Ivy. Eve scrambled up and backed away in shock. "Ivy?! What the hell?! What if someone sees you?"

"They won't," Ivy's face said, as if it were absolute fact. Eve slowly crept closer – it was incredible, how an almost exact likeness of the woman's face had somehow been sculpted out of the surface of the cactus, except the eye sockets were hollow and the mouth only really consisting of a pair of full, spiky lips. She wanted to touch it, but she didn't want to hurt herself.

"How…how are you doing that?" she asked in wonder.

"It doesn't matter now. I'll tell you tonight," said the face.

"Tonight?" Eve couldn't hide the excitement in her voice.

The face blinked in acknowledgement, rather than nodding. "Yes, tonight. Come straight to the park after you finish work. You might want to bring some lab equipment this time."

Eve frowned. "Like…what?"

"Scalpels, tweezers, vials, slides, a microscope…whatever you think is necessary, I suppose. I think it's time that we move on to…physical examinations."

Eve's eye grew wide. "Are you sure?"

"I am. Come tonight." The lips of cactus-Ivy quirked up, ever so slightly, into a small smile, before the face seemed to melt away and the cactus returned to its former state, albeit now sitting in a broken pot. Dumbstruck, Eve sat back down on her chair, scarcely daring to believe what had just happened. A million new questions were racing through her head alongside the million questions that had been there already, and now she had the added prospect of perhaps getting some of them answered _that very night_. The anticipation was already starting to bubble inside her; it wasn't just about the element of scientific discovery anymore, she knew that. It was a combination of her desire for knowledge and her desire for Ivy herself. She knew it was dangerous, but she couldn't ever turn down an opportunity like this for anything.

Eve glanced up at the clock. It was still morning, and there were hours to go before she could feasibly clock off and not get yelled at for doing so. Somehow, she needed to occupy her head, heart, and hands until they were free to focus on Ivy that night.

That was going to take some doing.


	8. Chapter 7

"Have you been messing with my head?"

Ivy's left eyebrow rose into a perfect green arch, but she didn't say anything.

Eve tried again. "It's just…I've been thinking thoughts that I never thought I would. Like, my boss is a stupid piece of meat. My colleagues are inferior. And I keep missing things, I can't focus on stuff. I mean, when you did your whole face-in-the-cactus thing earlier, I didn't hear it happening at all! You broke the damn pot, and I didn't hear anything." She sighed and her shoulders slumped. "I feel like I'm losing my mind."

"If you think I'm causing this, why do you keep coming here?"

"Because…" Eve paused, not quite sure how to answer. If she said the other reason, the one that had nothing to do with science, Ivy might send her away. "You fascinate me," she said at last. "I want to find out more about you, so I keep coming back. And that's another thing," she added, as she slowly removed a syringe from Ivy's arm, making her wince a tiny bit. The blood inside was a dark mixture of red and green. "How did you do that? How did you speak to me through my cactus?"

Rubbing her arm, Ivy looked at her contemplatively. "It's to do with my connection to the underlying lifeforce that holds together the entire planet." She said it like was the most natural thing in the world – which, Eve supposed, it was.

"Seriously? You're in touch with every living thing on Earth?"

"Every _plant_ on Earth, and not unless I concentrate. The force is called the Green. It's an intrinsic part of nature." Ivy's eyes were alight, the way they always seemed to be when she was talking about a positive element of her powers. She nodded towards the syringe, which Eve was still holding in mid-air. "What are you going to do with that?"

Still trying to process this latest piece of information, Eve picked up a glass vial and a stopper. "I'll study it under a microscope, to see what makes it different to…regular blood. Obviously the colour's different, but I want to see if there's anything else that sets it apart." She emptied the syringe into the vial and secured it tightly – the fact that Ivy had even allowed her to take a sample of her blood was amazing enough, and she really didn't want to waste it.

"Toxins will be common." Ivy reached out and easily took the vial from Eve's hand, studying it closely. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever actually seen my blood before."

"You have toxins in your _blood_?" Eve asked, amazed. "Doesn't that…harm you?"

"Evidently not." Ivy looked at Eve with something like contempt, and Eve felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. "The poisons in my bloodstream are a part of my body, just like everything else. I'm immune to them. They travel through my veins, and I can make them congregate on the top layer of my skin, my lips, my fingers…" she trailed off, suggestively, not in a sexual way, but as if she were reminding Eve that she could kill her with a handshake if she wanted to.

Eve chose to fall silent and busy herself with packing the vial of Ivy's blood and her other equipment away, working quickly to distract herself. A small part of her wanted to just leave it at that, go home and stew over the expression of derision that had been on Ivy's face over moments before. She felt so silly. In one moment of scorn, with two simple words, Ivy had managed to make her feel about two inches tall.

"I've been thinking about something. Something…I want to ask you." Ivy broke the silence conversationally, her tone gentle.

Eve looked up at her, slowly, tentatively. There was a distinct change in Ivy's manner, as if for once _she_ was the one who was nervous. "What is it?"

Their eyes met, and something passed between them. Ivy looked away, then cleared her throat. "I was wondering…if it would make more sense, to you, and for our experiments…if you stayed here. With me," she added, as if Eve needed any kind of clarification. "Rather than me summoning you whenever I feel like it, what if you were just…here?"

"Are you…are you sure?" Eve couldn't seem to wrap her head around what Ivy was saying. "I mean, do you trust me enough to not, um, reveal your secrets to anybody?"

"You seem to have proven yourself in that respect so far," Ivy explained, "and surely if you were staying here then there wouldn't really be any opportunity to tell anyone else about what we're doing." Since she'd posed the question, the potentially life-altering question that she seemed to be treating like the most everyday thing possible, Ivy hadn't blinked once, and Eve was finding it hard to concentrate under the steady gaze of her deep green eyes. "I would, effectively, be trusting you completely, and you know what will happen if you ever break that trust."

"I…do." Eve paused for a moment, thinking. "What about my work?"

"As far as I can tell, from what I heard this morning, I have become your work," Ivy said slowly.

Eve blushed again. "How much of that did you hear? I didn't think you were in the room for that."

"I was around," was all she said.

It was getting more and more difficult for Eve to think up reasons not to take up residence in Poison Ivy's home. She would have to abandon her work, her laboratory, her own apartment, the few friends she had made…her old life would be cut off. And yet, she didn't feel like that was as huge a loss as it should have been; not with the prospect of growing even closer to Ivy, learning more of her secrets, more about her incredible abilities, maybe even managing to find the real woman behind the cold, beautiful exterior. She swallowed. "I…Are you sure this is…okay?"

Ivy reached forward and laid her hand gently on Eve's arm, the coolness of her fingers causing a scattering of goosebumps to appear on her skin. "I think I could learn to live with you," she said. "You're not like other scientists I've met before. You…respect me."

Eve swallowed, thinking, and ran a hand through her hair. Even though she was inwardly jumping up and down with glee at Ivy's request, there was a part of her that knew that something like couldn't be a snap decision. "Can I think about it? I mean," she added quickly, seeing Ivy's incredulous expression, "thank you, for offering me this – I know, or, well, I think I know how much it means to you to be undisturbed and everything…but it's a big step, you know? I've never lived with anyone besides my parents before, I don't know what to do, or how to behave, and I can't answer right now. I can't say yes, because I don't know if I'm ready to do something like this even though I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, which is crazy, because you could kill me without a second thought, and if I say no I don't know what you'll do, so I just need to…" Eve trailed off when she realised exactly what she'd just said.

"I understand." Ivy was looking amused. "Take your time, think it through. The offer still stands."

Neither of them chose to acknowledge exactly what Eve had said about her feelings for Ivy – that could wait for another time, perhaps when they knew each other a bit better. Once again, Eve packed her things away, Ivy knocked her out and she awoke bleary-eyed in the soft grass close to the park gates, hidden behind a large bush. She stood up, brushed herself off, gathered up her bags and set off back towards her apartment building. The sky was still a deep inky blue-black and there was a slight chill wind in the air, but Eve knew her way home from the park like the back of her hand by now, and she walked quickly, eager to get back and have a hot shower, followed by a big steaming mug of tea.

She turned a corner and the wind picked up, lifting her hair and making it fly around her head. Irritated, she stopped, put her bags down and pulled an elastic band off her arm to tie her hair back and keep it out of her eyes.

A rustle of fabric. A thump of large feet landing on the ground behind her. A huge, black-gloved hand closing over her mouth. A coarse, deep voice in her ear.

"Don't struggle, Evelyn. I'm going to ask you some questions. And you're going to answer them. Do you understand me?"


	9. Chapter 8

The Batman let go of Eve as soon as he realised that she wasn't going to scream, and moved so she was forced back against the wall of the building beside them, into the shadows, where she couldn't run away. He stood over her, at least a foot taller than she was, but that included the ears of his cowl and the thick soles of his boots. Eve threw her head back and met his gaze head-on, determined to show him that she wasn't afraid. When she thought about it, the Batman wasn't as bad as Ivy. The worst he could do was injure her. He didn't kill people. There wasn't any risk of death from a slight brush of skin-on-skin. With this in mind, she stood defiantly between him and the wall.

He was growling at her now, in that deep, guttural voice that he clearly put on to sound more intimidating. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to find you again, Evelyn." His eyes narrowed.

"When did we get on first-name terms?" she shot back. After the initial shock of him grabbing her, the adrenaline had risen in her body and was now coursing through her veins. "What do you want?"

"I want to know what the hell you think you're doing. What did I tell you to do? Why have you kept up going to see Ivy?"

Eve knew then why he'd singled her out, tracked her down again – he had warned her about spending time with Ivy, the dangers of getting close to her, and she hadn't listened to a word he'd said. Well, scratch that, she had listened, but she hadn't followed his advice. She doubted he was used to people doing that.

"I know what I'm doing," she said at last. It wasn't exactly true, but she said it with enough confidence to make it seem believable.

The Batman wasn't fooled. Or, at least, Eve didn't think he was. It was hard to discern anything from his expression when she could only really see his mouth and impressive lantern jaw. "No, you don't. Ivy is incredibly unpredictable. There's a reason besides the obvious that she can't be part of normal society. She is _crazy_." He slammed his hands against the wall either side of her head to emphasise his point. "You don't know what you've got yourself involved in."

"And you do?" Eve was undoubtedly nervous, backed up against the wall without a way out, but still she stuck her chin out defiantly and didn't give in.

"I know a hell of a lot more than you do about her. You need to leave her alone, for your own good."

Eve frowned. "What if I don't? What are you going to do to me?" She crossed her arms. "You can't arrest me, I haven't done anything illegal. You could hurt me, but I doubt you would hurt an innocent woman. And short of physically restraining me and sticking me on a plane yourself, you can't make me leave Gotham."

She could tell when he clenched his teeth, as if he was trying to stop himself from yelling at her. His eyes narrowed into angry slits. "I'll give you one last warning. Give this up. Get away from Ivy. Forget about her."

Eve didn't say anything. She kept her arms crossed, her head up, her jaw set. There was something to be said about being in love, even if it was in love with a human-plant hybrid with homicidal tendencies, when even a threat from the Batman couldn't change your mind. She wasn't going to give up on what she'd discovered with Ivy. She could feel it; she was just on the brink, teetering back and forth on the edge of a breakthrough. She knew that if she kept at it, she might finally earn Ivy's trust and get closer to her than anyone before. No way was the Batman going to put a stop to her dreams, not now she'd already come so much further than she ever thought she could.

"No."

He growled, then, and for the first ever Eve felt as if the Batman really would hurt her, if it meant she did what he told her to do. The bulk of his enormous, powerful body loomed over her, blocking her escape. She swallowed hard and waited. There was a sudden flurry of black and a rush of wind, and she was free, standing alone in the alley, her hair fluttering in the wake of the Batman's vanishing act. Eve exhaled slowly, having not even realised she was holding her breath, and crossed her arms over her chest before setting off home. The promise of a long hot shower was still calling out to her, and she walked quickly, staring at the ground, not taking in anything of the world around her. Her mind was pitching and tossing. She needed to calm down.

The apartment was dark but warm when Eve finally arrived home. She switched the light on and shrugged her coat off, immediately spotting the bouquet of vivid blooms spread out in the middle of the coffee table. Pinks, oranges, reds, purples, and yellows jumped out at her, filling the apartment with their subtle fragrances. Confused, Eve wandered over to the table and picked up one of the flowers, inhaling the sweet perfume.

As far as she knew, there was only one way the flowers could have come to be there, and it didn't make thinking about what to do with her current situation any easier. It felt like Ivy was trying to coerce her, rather than letting her reach a decision on her own. Still, Eve put the flowers in a big jug of water and arranged them prettily on her bedside table, next to her beloved mimosa pudica, before heading off for the long-awaited shower.

Later, lying spread-eagled in her bed, Eve stared at the ceiling and thought.

Point one – she loved Ivy. She knew that now, there was no point trying to deny it to herself. Telling Ivy, if it ever got that far, was a different matter entirely.

Point two – because she loved Ivy, she didn't want to leave her and never see her again. Of course she didn't. _Aye_, Eve thought, stretching her arms above her head, _there's the rub._

What to do, when the one you love could kill you at any moment? Ivy was not a normal woman, and she hadn't been for a long time. She was deadly, with an extensive knowledge of how to poison a person that went far beyond simply giving them a kiss goodbye.

_But you know that, and you can stay on her good side_, said a niggling little voice at the back of Eve's head. She frowned. Maybe she could do that – maybe she and Ivy would be able to coexist quite well, but what about her work? She'd promised Mortimer something big, and to deliver that she would need to actually _go_ to work. Living with Ivy would eliminate that possibility. She'd have to give up her lab, her experiments, her notes, her – albeit somewhat tenuous – relationships with her colleagues…was it worth it?

That was the hardest question of all – whether all her efforts to get closer to and study Ivy were for nothing, or would be for nothing. Eve paused, frowning again. Her hand reached out and plucked one of the flowers from the vase next to the bed. She twirled the flower in her hands, stroking the silky petals, breathing in the delicate, somehow calming, scent. She felt better, but she still hadn't solved her problem.

Could she really, truly, justify giving up everything she'd been working on and built for herself since she came to Gotham, for the chance to be with the woman she loved, even if it turned out to be the stupidest thing she'd ever done? Even though there was no sign that Ivy loved her back, or ever would? Even though she would never be able to tell the world anything she found out about her? Even though Ivy could kill her with a single touch?

Eve sat up in frustration and picked up the flower once more, getting up to cross the room and throw the curtains wide. The sky was orange, clouds blocking the moon and cocooning the city in its own orange streetlamp glow. She opened the window and the night air rushed into the room, raising goosebumps on Eve's exposed skin and making the curtains flutter around her. She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. Then she had an idea.

"I do it," she said to herself. She plucked one of the petals from the flower and sent it flying away on the breeze.

"I don't do it." Another petal, soaring into the sky. She kept going, the excitement building inside of her. Somehow, she knew, by the time she was done, no matter what she ended up saying when the final petal flew away, she would know what she was going to do.

_Pluck_. "I do it." _Pluck._ "I don't do it." Over and over, until at last she was down to the final petal. She took a deep breath, trying to keep the smile from spreading over her face.

"I do it."

That was it. The risks were there, but she knew she would always regret it if she played it safe. Standing by the open window, feeling the wind on her face, feeling free and bubbling with anticipation, Eve knew that she wouldn't give up this opportunity for anything.


	10. Chapter 9

Dappled sunlight danced through the leaves up above, throwing splashes of light and shadow across the soft grass. A gentle breeze whistled through the trees, making them rustle and whisper as if they were telling each other their secrets. Right on the edge of hearing hung the low, indistinct hum of the city waking up, too far away to seem real.

It was, Eve thought as she opened her eyes, a wonderful way to wake up.

Even though the air was full of a sharp wintery chill outside, the cocoon of trees that Ivy had created protected Eve and helped the plants within to thrive. It was, in essence, a greenhouse, but Eve liked to think of it more as a temple. The roof stretched high, but not so high that it could be seen outside the copse of tall trees that shielded it from prying eyes. Vines and branches twisted and coiled overhead in a way that resembled the vaults of a cathedral ceiling, a thousand shades of green intertwined, the sunlight passing through and casting patterns like stained glass. It was almost as if Nature had decided that people needed a place to worship its magnitude and magnificence, and a suitable construction had simply sprung out of the ground, ready-made.

It was a place, Eve was beginning to discover, where she could be free to worship the goddess that walked under this canopy and called it her home. It was only her third morning waking up beneath Ivy's self-made sky, but already she could feel a shift in how she was being regarded. Now that they were staying together, and all Eve's experiments – performed using equipment that Ivy had produced when she'd moved in, and had mentioned nothing of where she'd got it from – could be conducted without risk of the results being discovered by someone else, Ivy had definitely relaxed.

"Breakfast?"

Eve pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned to see Ivy standing beneath an impossible tree. Its branches were heavy with fruit, all different kinds, none of which it should have been possible to grow on the same plant. Feeling herself staring, Eve flattened her hair and got up, brushing the grass that had been squashed by her sleeping body until it stood on end again, only slightly dishevelled.

Ivy smiled at her, a gentle, slow smile. "Good morning, Evelyn. How did you sleep?"

"Um…well, thank you." Eve swallowed. "That's amazing." She pointed at the tree. The previous two mornings, Ivy had appeared with some fruit arranged on a large leaf for breakfast, but only now was she finding out where that actually came from. Curious, she walked towards it, running her fingertips gently over the trunk, feeling the smooth bark against her skin. "You have to show me how you did this," she breathed.

Ivy smiled again. "Later. First, you need to eat." Her elegant fingers reached up into the branches of the tree, and returned with a fat red pomegranate clasped between them. With a whisper of a touch, the skin of the fruit split along some invisible seam and burst open. Inside, the flesh glittered as bright as rubies.

"Try some," Ivy said gently, and Eve didn't need telling twice. She carefully took the fruit and scooped some of the flesh into her mouth, marvelling at the tart sweetness that exploded on her tongue. She licked her lips, staining them scarlet.

"Wow!" Eve had never eaten anything like it. "That is…that's like the _epitome_ of what fruit should taste like. Everything should taste like that."

Ivy laughed, somewhere between a purr and a chuckle. "Try something else, they're all yours if you want them. I like to experiment sometimes, too."

Hours later, Eve sat cross-legged on a patch of grass, two microscopes resting on a tree root that had burst out of the ground in front of her. Strewn across the grass were sheets of paper, notebooks, files, pens, and pencils, with several bags leaning against the tree containing anything else that she might need (Eve was not a tidy scientist).Three small vials sat in a rack beside her – one full of Ivy's blood, one full of her own for the sake of comparison, and the third full of chlorophyll. She'd managed to distil some by crushing leaves in a pestle and mortar, a blender not being available, mixing them with water and straining the liquid through a cloth. It was very much a low-tech version of what she would normally have done, but practically, it yielded the same result.

It was just then, as she was fiddling with the magnification on the microscope, that Ivy appeared beside her and picked up the two vials of blood, holding them up in the light. Eve watched as a small frown appeared between her eyebrows.

"It's funny," she said, uncrossing her legs and resting on her knees. "To the naked eye, our blood looks pretty much the same, besides the slight change in colour."

"But it's not." It was a statement, not a question.

"Far from it." Ivy crouched down and leaned in close as Eve was speaking, and it was all she could do not to stare at the woman's perfect, sculpted body. She swallowed, her mouth dry. "You…you see, your blood," she took the vial and held it up, "your blood, well, under a microscope, the red cells bear more resemblance to chlorophyll than they do haemoglobin. I'm no expert, but compared to my own, my…regular, human, blood, there's a massive difference." She turned away, trying to busy herself and distract her mind. Her hands were shaking slightly as she inserted a needle into each of the vials and let a few droplets fall onto two glass slides. She put one slide under each microscope. "Take a look," she said, gesturing towards them.

Ivy knelt down, too, her bare thigh brushing against Eve's. Even through the sturdy denim of her jeans, the brief contact caused goosebumps to erupt on her skin.

"Fascinating," Ivy breathed, studying the two samples. "I've never tried to make a comparison like this before. Side by side, they're…completely different." She looked up, glancing at Eve with an expression bordering on respect. "What's the chlorophyll for?"

There was a moment's pause – Eve's mouth had gone completely dry, and she had to struggle to work up some moisture so she could respond. "I wanted to try mixing them," she explained. "I was wondering if mixing the chlorophyll with my blood would create a substance that at all resembled the sample I got from you."

"And if it turns out that my blood is not simply a mixture of the two?" Ivy enquired, arching an eyebrow.

"Then…well, then I'd probably have to test it further. A result like that could mean that your red blood cells aren't even based on iron, but magnesium, like a plant." Eve smiled slightly, the excitement that always came when she was on the brink of some new discovery filling her with anticipation.

"Proving that I am not, in fact, human," Ivy said slowly, processing the idea. "You're a clever woman, Evelyn." She stood up, flicking her long red hair over her shoulders. "Come."

Wordlessly, Eve got up, cleared the samples away and followed Ivy into the trees. They walked in silence for a few minutes, then Ivy stepped onto a thick, low-hanging branch and held out her hand. Hesitantly, Eve took it and climbed up to stand next to her, and the next moment the branch was moving, lifting them up through the trees, past leaves and flowers and blossoming buds, into the canopy. The branch stopped and Eve followed Ivy as she stepped down and sat in the midst of a large oak tree, using her hands to coax new leaves out from their hiding places to form a sort of cushion against the hard tree bark. Another wave of her hand and the roof of the cathedral, close enough to them now that Eve could have stretched up and touched it, peeled away and revealed the dark grey sky above them, thick clouds swollen with rain.

Captivated as she was, it took Eve a moment to remember that there had been several burning questions she'd been wanting to ask. She stared out across the park as the first drops of rain started to fall, feeling that if she wasn't looking at Ivy it would be easier to say what was on her mind.

"Would it bother you, if you weren't human anymore?"

She could feel Ivy's eyes on her, but it was a little while before she replied.

"You and I live in a world with men and women who can fly, who can run the circumference of the Earth in seconds, who can hold entire continents above their heads without breaking a sweat. There are people who are the very peak of human condition; creatures and beings of magic and science; gods and monsters, most of them trying to get by without causing too many problems for everyone else. There are those wandering the surface of this planet that weren't even born here. The world has changed so much," she said at last. It was almost as she was speaking to herself, like Eve wasn't really there, but just a voice in her head asking the questions. "We've entered an age where nobody really knows what makes a human anymore. These people, most of them, started out as human, like me. They were normal, and something cataclysmic happened that forever changed who they were, and how they would be seen by everyone else.

"But that didn't stop them from being human. Underneath, down at the smallest level, they are still intrinsically human in a biological sense. Their DNA is basically the same, bar the changes that let them shoot lasers from their eyes, or change solid rock into gold, or whatever it is that makes them 'super'.

And then there's me, and others like me. No longer biologically human beings, but still able to identify ourselves as such."

"No longer human, but still capable of humanity." Eve was still staring out at the falling rain, but she stole a glance at Ivy when she spoke.

"What makes you think I'm capable of humanity? Of compassion?" Ivy asked. She sounded genuinely curious, rather than insulted.

"I'm not dead," Eve said simply. "You had the opportunity to kill me, and you didn't. You let me come and visit you instead, and learn about you, and every time I learnt something new and you let me walk away from here with that information, you could have ended my life to stop anybody else finding out what I had." Feeling emboldened, she shuffled sideways along the branch until she and Ivy were side-by-side, and looked her straight in the eye. "That compassion, that _trust_ of another person, that willingness to let someone in…it's hard to do, it's so hard. The hardest thing most people ever do is trust another person with their secrets, because as soon as you've let them out, that person has all the ammunition they will ever need to break you down."

Here, her voice cracked, but she cleared her throat and kept going, because she felt that she needed to say it, and Ivy needed to hear it. "Look. For all I know, your skin is made of bark and your hair is actually trichomes, and your blood might say you're a plant, but your thoughts and feelings? Your compassion, your conviction? _They_ make you human. There's still something left of the woman you were before this happened to you, and no matter what your blood or your DNA says, that's still a part of who you are."

Ivy was staring at her, and immediately Eve felt a flush of crimson sweep up her chest and face. She wasn't one for bold, impassioned speeches, but there was something about being in love with Ivy that made her want to comfort her and reassure her, to make it known to her that she was loved and admired and that she wasn't just a freak of nature. How far from a freak of nature she was.

The silence hung between them, thick with anticipation and misted rain. Ivy was thinking something over.

"No longer human, but still capable of humanity," she said slowly, and then she smiled. A proper smile, that lit up her eyes and made Eve's heart do a backflip. "You're a clever woman, Evelyn."

And then she was there – she closed the gap between them, and in the midst of wonder and amazement and surprise and the warm pull of attraction, Eve could only think of one thing.

She was kissing Poison Ivy.

* * *

><p>Hello, lovely readers! Apologies that chapters have been a bit sporadic recently – unfortunately essays and exam prep must take precedence for now, but I will hopefully be able to post more regularly when that's all done and dusted.<p>

I have a request for you: would anybody be interested in creating some character art for this story that I could use as the cover picture and publicise on my profile? I would be willing to give you some detailed character descriptions to help you, as well as cosmic goodwill and word-spreading about your art/stories in return for what you come up with.

Message me if you're interested, and please please keep reading and reviewing this story! Your support is what keeps me going :D

xxxxx


	11. Chapter 10

The last chapter contained a pomegranate, this one contains a **lemon**. You have been warned!

* * *

><p>It was overwhelming and terrifying and wonderful at the same time. She could taste the honey of Ivy's tongue coaxing its way into her mouth; she could smell the scents of ripe fruit and blooming flowers, feel Ivy's skin and her fingers and her lips, those lips that had been smiling at her so freely only seconds before.<p>

And then, with no warning, the spell was broken. Eve opened her eyes and backed away, shuffling back along the branch until she was leaning against the tree trunk, trying to catch her breath. Ivy stared at her, confused.

"Evelyn? What is it?"

Eve tried to collect her thoughts, to articulate the question that had suddenly blazed across her mind. "I just need to know," she whispered. "Is this real?"

Ivy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…did you…_do_ anything to me, so you could seduce me? Did you mess with my head? Or," she paused, hardly daring to say it, "do you really want this?"

There was a pause, where the only sound was the still-falling rain splattering on the grass below and the leaves surrounding the two women. It was a small thing, that pause, that silence, but it justified the icy trickle of suspicion and pain that was starting to pool in Eve's heart.

"I have…manipulated your mind, yes."

A knife, twisting. Eve looked away, tears starting to prick behind her eyes.

"Evelyn…Eve, please. Please, listen to me." She heard Ivy moving, coming closer, then felt her cool hand resting on her arm. "Back when we first began our…relationship, I admit I did use some of my mind-controlling spores on you. I didn't trust you not to let something slip to someone else. Everything you just told me, about me trusting you to keep my secrets, that that makes me human, I couldn't do that at first. It was too hard for me. It's been so long since I properly trusted someone, and it didn't work out for me when I did. I'll admit, I found it hard to believe that you would keep everything to yourself, so I needed a…contingency plan. Just until I could be sure. I only used it a few times, I _swear_. I stopped a long time before you came here to stay with me." Her voice was full of shame.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Eve looked at Ivy from underneath her wet eyelashes. "Is that true?" Her voice was small and cracked when she spoke, like she was trying to keep from screaming. She didn't want to let the chance of being with Ivy slip through her fingers, but while of her was shouting in indignation and rage while another part wished she'd just kept her stupid mouth shut.

"All of it." Ivy's hand slid into Eve's, their fingers interlocking, while the other cupped her chin just like she had when they'd first met properly. A single sneaky tear manages to slip over the edge and run down Eve's cheek, and Ivy's fingertip brushed it away. The contact left a blossom of gentle heat on her skin. "I trust you now, more than I have anybody, in a long time. There's something about you, Evelyn, that I just can't ignore, no matter how hard I try. I'm not just playing with you, seducing you, manipulating you…I _want_ this. I want you." As she spoke, she moved closer to Eve, straddling the branch opposite her, until they were a hair's breadth away from recreating their first sensually charged kiss.

There was a long, tantalising moment of silence; Eve's mind seemed to be disregarding basic functions like breathing and moving, in favour of relishing how close their bodies were. She couldn't stop herself from staring deep into her eyes, such a rich and piercing shade of green, and so close she felt like she was drowning in their gaze, unable to pull away.

"So do I," she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper.

And then they were together, Eve trapped between the solid trunk of the tree and the sensual curves of Ivy's body. Her lungs emptied with a shocked gasp as she felt Ivy's lips brushing against her neck, planting delicate kisses up her jaw before finally capturing her mouth and sending an explosion of honey across her tastebuds. Feverishly, she kissed her back, wrapping her arms around Ivy's shoulders and twining her fingers into her hair. She felt like she couldn't breathe – the air she was taking in wasn't enough, it was too hot, too heavy with pollen and misted rain – but in the best possible way. She was vaguely aware of a sharp point trailing down the middle of her chest and stomach, a gentle ripping sound following in its wake, and then her breasts were exposed to the night air and the firm caress of Ivy's fingers.

Eve gasped again and a small moan, barely audible, escaped her mouth, when she felt Ivy's lips leaving another trail of kisses down between her breasts before she took one nipple into the cool wetness of her talented mouth. Her nipples were sore and sensitive, made hard by the temperature, and she cried out at the careful nip of teeth and lavish swirl of tongue. Ivy toyed with her, seeing what her mouth could do to set her off, her hands roaming over Eve's exposed body, causing goosebumps to scatter across her skin. She paused and lifted her head, fixing her with another intense gaze. She leaned in close, pressing skin to skin, and Eve realised with a start that the covering of leaves which usually preserved some of Ivy's modesty had disappeared. The softness of their breasts brushing together brought another moan, louder this time, up and out of her mouth.

"Do you trust me?" Ivy whispered in her ear, her lips barely making contact but somehow still managing to make Eve shiver.

"Ye-es…" It was hard to speak.

"Then relax," came the reply, "I promise I won't hurt you. I don't _want _to hurt you."

And then, for the second time in her life, Eve felt vines trailing up her legs, winding around, but they weren't attacking her. Instead they slithered upwards inside her jeans, sharp thorns cutting the fabric right through until the clothing fell off and disappeared into the darkness of the grove below, taking her torn underwear with it. At the same time, another vine carefully encircled her wrists and pulled them above her head, winding itself around the trunk of the tree, and all of a sudden she was completely exposed, straddling the tree branch in just her torn T-shirt. Any protests she might have had were silenced with another powerful kiss that sent Eve's mind reeling and an unbridled cry of need into Ivy's pliant mouth. She answered it with an almost animal groan, her hands sliding down and round to grip Eve's thighs and lift her onto her lap. Eve wrapped her legs around Ivy's back, gasping again when she felt one hand make its way down and settle between her thighs.

Now that she'd gotten used to the temperature of Ivy's skin, her skilful fingers felt amazing as they teased and stroked, making her shudder and gasp. They explored her, working her out, seeking the exactly right spot, and when they found it Eve cried out and bucked her hips, instantly craving more contact. She was breathing hard in short gasps, and when her mouth was captured by Ivy's again at the same time as she slipped two fingers inside Eve and crooked them in a 'come hither' gesture, a raw whimper of need burst from her throat and she knew that she only needed one more push to send her over the edge.

She arched back to feel more of the delicious friction of Ivy's smooth, skilled fingers as another one made its way inside her, the three working together to coax her towards climax. Ivy's thumb started to rub teasing circles over Eve's clit, as she leaned forward to whisper in her ear once more.

"Evelyn," she purred, "I want you to give in. Give yourself to me…" Her tongue traced a delicate trail down from Eve's ear to her mouth, then slipped inside to kiss her deeply again. She could feel, rather than hear, the other woman's desperate moans as she struggled to contain her desire before finally giving in and letting it take over her body, rocking it through with waves of pleasure, taking her breath away until she was spent, her head lolling forwards to rest on Ivy's shoulder.

"Ivy…" she breathed, then started kissing her in any place she could reach. The vines trapping her arms uncoiled themselves gently and she immediately threw them around Ivy's neck again, launching herself forward so Ivy was lying beneath her on the branch and she was on top, straddling her hips. One hand slid down Ivy's gorgeous body, the other entwined itself in her hair, cupping her face while she kissed her hard.

Ivy broke away for a second and gazed up at her, her eyes hazy with lust. "Pamela," she murmured. "My name is Pamela."

And with that, the final barrier between them fell.

Hands explored, fingers groped, lips caressed, breaths and gasps and moans of longing were shared. The atmosphere around them grew thick with heat and the scent of sex; thousands of grains of pollen floated in the air, clinging to hot and cold skin damp with sweat and condensation; the rain had ceased and the only sounds that filled the air were Ivy and Eve's combined cries of passion.

Eve crooked her fingers inside Ivy's body, in the same gesture as she had with her, then twisted and pumped them in and out until Ivy's panting breaths morphed into a long, keening cry that echoed through the trees, and she relaxed onto the branch, her limbs hanging down at the sides.

Neither of them said anything for a long time – they simply lay together, Eve resting her head on Ivy's chest, their hands interlocked as they relished the aftermath of their ecstasy and waited for their breathing to return to normal. Then, two thick vines made their way between the dozing pair, coiling under their arms and lifting them up. They held each other's hands as the vines carried them down to the ground, where a patch of thick, smooth leaves was waiting. When they were released and lying down in the leaves, Eve rested her arm across Ivy's stomach. Ivy simply lay on her back with her eyes closed, a tiny satisfied smile on her lips.

The night air was chilly now, and Eve's state of languid bliss was interrupted by the need to wrap her arms around herself. She shivered, and Ivy looked at her, then smiled wider. With a leisurely wave of her hand, a thin blanket of moss started to form and make its way up Eve's body, where she was able to grab the edges and wrap it around herself gratefully. Ivy remained resplendently nude, basking in the moonlight that was no longer blocked out by the canopy. She wrapped an arm around Eve's shoulder and drew her closer, stroking her messy waves of hair with her other hand.

"Eve?" she whispered into the night.

"Yes?" The reply was quiet and stifled by a small yawn.

"Do you love me?"

There was a pause as the question hung in the air, waiting to be answered. In response, Eve raised her head and kissed Ivy softly but assuredly, like it was the only thing she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

"Yes," she murmured. "I love you."

Ivy swallowed hard, surprised at the lump of emotion that appeared in her throat when she heard those words. She held Eve closer with one protective arm, as if she couldn't quite believe that the woman was real. Nobody had said those words to her and meant them, really _meant them_, in such a long time that she'd thought she'd forgotten how it felt to be on the receiving end, until it had just then all come rushing back. Wildly, suddenly, there was a flash of an image in her mind, of her and her Eve living a quiet life together, getting lost in each other, learning how to make it work between them. No more Gotham. They'd find a place in the rainforest somewhere, to be left in peace. No more crime. Just her, and Eve, and the Green, forever.

Could it be possible? Had she really found someone with whom she could truly just…be? To be free with, to love and be loved by them in return? Ivy glanced down again at the sleeping woman in her arms and believed it to be true. There really was nobody else she wanted to be with, that she could love, that she could trust so completely.

With a whisper even she could barely hear, she said, "I love you too."


	12. This is not a chapter!

Hello everyone!

I'm so sorry I haven't updated this story for a while. Rest assured, I won't be leaving it for three years like I did last time, though! I've just been so busy over the last few months, with exams, finding a job, graduating from university, and a few unfortunate personal things that I'm working through, that Ivy and Eve have fallen by the wayside.

I'm not giving up on this story (I already have the ending planned out, in fact) and I hope you won't give up on me, and please keep reading and reviewing like the lovely people you are. It makes me very happy to see my writing being appreciated!

Abbey xx


	13. Chapter 11

Ivy and Eve kept on falling in love.

It was as if they both took on a new lease of life when they were together; gone were Eve's concerns about work, pleasing Mortimer, maintaining the new life that she'd worked so hard to build but then had left behind. She hadn't been back to her apartment in over a month, nor had she shown her face at work. In a phone call to Mortimer's office, she'd cited a family emergency –he wasn't to know that she had next to no family left. Feigning upset and regret that she didn't know when she'd be back, as well as a promising to do as much work as possible while she was away, had come naturally. Mortimer had swallowed the lie and been only too willing to let Eve take all the time she needed – luckily, he'd mistaken the tremor in Eve's voice as suppressed emotion, rather than a struggle not to cry out in pleasure while Ivy played with her nipples. As soon as the phone call was over, Eve had switched it off and fallen onto the grass in Ivy's arms, determined to pay her back for the teasing. Since then, she'd barely thought about work.

Their days together were a blur of waking up entwined; having a long, slow, languorous breakfast, more often than not involving sweet fruit juice and bare skin; taking the time to learn each other's bodies, discover what made them tick, find those particularly pleasurable spots; and when the sun went down, Robinson Park became theirs and theirs alone. Eve adored their moonlit excursions, wandering through the trees, bathing in the very same pool where she had seen Ivy that fateful day, lying down together and listening to the sounds of the night – the owls calling to each other, cicadas chirruping, leaves rustling, creatures snuffling and burrowing in the undergrowth. Even though there was barely half a mile in any direction between them and the city itself, the park felt so far away from that. The noises of Gotham, the cars, the people, the trains…it was another world. Eve and Ivy had their own world, and their own life together, and that was enough.

They _talked_, too, about so many things. They shared their histories, bared their souls, in the way that you do when you're finally getting down to figuring out the meat and bones of the one you love. All the mistrust and fear that had overshadowed the start of their relationship had fallen away, leaving only the joy of discovering each other in its wake.

Eve described how alienated she had felt growing up, her interest in plants and the botanical world marking her out as someone to be ridiculed. When she'd gone on to study at college, she had thrived in an environment of like-minded peers, but even then, surrounded by people who shared her love of plants, she had been marked out for a different reason – her sexual preference. One night, lying together under the canopy, cloaked in leaves (Eve had forsaken her own clothes in favour of those that nature – and Ivy – could provide), with Ivy's fingers playing with her hair, she described her first love.

"Her name was Jude," she murmured, the feel of Ivy's delicate touch weaving her hair into brains relaxing her, soothing her nerves. "I only found out when we'd broken up that it was actually Judith, but she'd tried to reinvent herself when she arrived at college. A lot of us did, I suppose."

"Did you?" Ivy asked curiously.

"I didn't really feel the need," Eve confessed, "and when I met Jude, she seemed to like me for who I was. She was studying law, but…she was the least likely person to be a lawyer _ever_. It was like she never did any work, never wore the right clothes for the job, but everybody loved her and she never failed a single class." Leaning back against Ivy's chest, Eve thought about the first woman she'd dared to fall to love with. Back then, Jude had been a wild one, a free spirit, something entirely new; now, in comparison to Ivy, she seemed almost tame. The woman she loved now was an incredibly powerful killer, talented thief and passionate lover; nothing and nobody could compare anymore.

Amongst their sexual explorations of each other, there were still times when Eve conducted experiments, except now they stemmed from the combined desire of Ivy and herself, to understand her better. While Eve took swabs and samples and subjected them to various tests to investigate hypothesis, Ivy would always stay to watch instead of leaving her like she used to. To her, Eve seemed to become a different person while she was working, engrossed in an experiment or writing notes at a feverish pace, her handwriting becoming less and less legible the more excited she got. She stopped caring about what she looked like, which was a novelty in itself – despite her more relaxed attitude towards the way she dressed, and her easy acceptance of bathing in a pool instead of showering, Eve still retreated into self-consciousness more often than not – and yet when she was deep into her own unique reverie, her mind working to make connections and form ideas as quick as lightning, she seemed to come to life. Ivy thought Eve looked her best when she was full of the glow of anticipation and excitement, her eyes alight with inquisitive fire.

Once, when Eve was attempting to extract Ivy's DNA from a cheek swab, Ivy watched her and talked, telling her all kinds of things, anything. She knew that despite the intense concentration involved, Eve hated working in complete silence, and with a lack of available electrical outlets had resorted to keeping up a steady stream of conversation, which served as both background noise and a change of pace if she wanted a break. On that particular day, having already told Eve how she had got her powers – her treatment at the hands of Jason Woodroe was still a sore spot, but she'd thought it was important for Eve to know – she went on to describe the months that followed. "I hated the plants, at first," she said, watching inquisitively as Eve poured distilled water into two beakers, adding salt to one and liquid soap to the other. "Their voices in my head, talking to me, telling me what they wanted, it was like…like a television with the volume down so it's only just out of hearing range. This constant hum in the back of my head, and even though I didn't understand any words I still knew what they were saying. I thought I was going mad, at first."

Eve looked up, her hands paused in the act of mixing Ivy's DNA sample with some sodium chloride solution in a small test tube. "How did you learn to control it?" she asked, her eyebrows knitted in a combination of interest and concentration. Still watching Ivy, she added more liquid soap to the test tube, sealed it up and gave it a shake.

"It took a while," Ivy admitted. "I was fighting them, at first, trying to control them through aggression; it didn't get me anywhere. There were a few…disasters." Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the memory, not red or pink, but dark green. It was beautiful. "Eventually I learnt to work _with_ the plants, rather than us working against each other." She ran her hands through her hair, causing it to cascade down over her shoulders, and Eve swallowed as she fought back the desire to grab hold and pull Ivy towards her for a kiss. Clearing her throat, she quickly finished the DNA extraction and put the long, stringy substance into a second test tube with a small amount of alcohol; keeping her hands busy always helped to distract her from the intense attraction she felt towards Ivy. She sat back on the grass and packed her equipment away.

Ivy was still watching her. "The plants are a part of me, now, as much as anything else. I can't imagine being without them." The way she said it, in a soft, low tone, seemed to imply that she was talking about something else.

The synergy between Ivy and her plants was never more apparent than when she and Eve made love. It happened a lot, honestly more than Eve had thought it would, but she would always be the last person to complain. There had never been anybody who'd loved her like Ivy did – even without the plants, with just her talented hands and explorative mouth, she made Eve feel things she'd only read about in books. It was strange, the first time that Ivy had used vines for a purpose other than to restrain her during sex; with the vines involved, delicate thin ones with a gentle touch that caressed her bare skin, it felt like the touch of Ivy's fingers was multiplied threefold, setting nerve endings on fire that she hadn't even know existed.

The sex, their love, their relationship, the experiments – it was a blur of discovery, of learning about each other in so many different ways. Time passed for them differently, the days and nights blending together so minutes became hours, hours became days, sleep patterns were scattered and the world outside the trees ceased to have any significance.

And then it was Christmas, sprung out of nowhere. Without the constant reminders of decorations and tinny festive music, department store Santas and overexcited children, it had almost entirely slipped Eve's mind. Neither she nor Ivy were planning to make a big fuss of it, which was a welcome change from previous years. As a nod to the occasion, in the run-up to midnight on the threshold of Christmas Day, they sat in their favourite tree together and waited for the distant chime of the cathedral bells.

Ivy couldn't help but smile when she looked at Eve. Like herself, she was wrapped in a thick, warm cloak of leaves and moss, which fell in soft folds around her body. Her brown hair was loose and woven through with bright red holly and creamy white mistletoe berries, and her skin was tinged a delicate pink from the night air. There was a fine dusting of snow falling from the sky, and flecks of it were scattered on her shoulders and chest, like she had been powdered with sugar. She was beautiful, completely at ease with herself, and when she looked up and her eyes met Ivy's, they were so full of happiness that it almost brought a lump to her throat. In the distance, the clock started striking twelve.

Eve chuckled as she listened to the steady chimes. "If you make a joke about 'Merry Christmas, Eve', I'm keeping your present for myself," she grinned.

"Merry Christmas, _Evelyn_," Ivy replied, smiling.

"Merry Christmas, Pamela," Eve whispered as she leaned in for a kiss.

When they broke apart, Ivy produced a small bundle of petals wrapped in long blades of grass and pressed into Eve's palm. "I got you something," she said. "It's only small, but I wanted you to have it."

Fascinated, Eve eased the parcel open, carefully peeling back the layers of soft petals to reveal the gift inside. Picking it up, she let a thin chain flow through her fingers until it stopped at a pendant shaped like an ivy leaf. It was silver and shining, about the size of her thumbnail and perfectly formed. When she turned the leaf this way and that in her hands, its polished surface shimmered with an iridescent green tint. Eagerly, Eve lifted her hair up and fastened the clasp behind her neck, letting the leaf's cool metal nestle between the tops of her breasts. She kissed Ivy again. "Thank you, it's beautiful."

"I'm glad you like it," Ivy said with a smile. "I didn't know what to get you, but like I said, I wanted you have something from me."

"But you've given me so much already," Eve argued, gesturing around at the trees. "You've given me your trust and your confidence, you've let me study you, you invited me in to your home…"

"And this is something else." Ivy took Eve's hands in hers and held them tight. "I know it's only been…months, that we've known each other, but I've never felt this way about anyone. In fact, I'd almost forgotten that I could. You make me happy, and you're a beautiful, fascinating, passionate woman, and I love you. There is nothing I could possibly give you that would be enough, because I would always want you to have everything."

Eve didn't know what to say. Silently, she stroked Ivy's hands with her thumbs, not daring to open her mouth in case she started blubbing. It would be just like her to start crying at such an intimate, romantic moment. Finally, when it felt like her tear ducts were successfully reined in, she whispered, "I love you, too," and pulled Ivy towards her, a little too roughly, so they ended up tangled together against the tree trunk, but it didn't matter. It was Christmas Day, but instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, they were celebrating their love for each other, in the branches of a tree surrounded by gently falling snow and the quiet peace of the city.

But then, the perfect silence of Gotham in the snow was broken by a faraway cry. Somewhere, out in the park, carrying across the cold night air, a shrill voice was calling.

"Pammy? Paaaaaaaammy? Are you out there?"

Ivy stiffened, listening. Eve watched her, not daring to say anything but bursting with curiosity. She had seen the change flash across Ivy's face – when only seconds before she had been relaxed and happy, now she was frowning, her green eyes grown cold. Instinctively, she had moved her body in front of Eve to cover as much of her as possible, like an animal protecting its mate. Her hands were splayed out, reaching around her to gather vines which crawled and curled up her arms, ready to be used defensively or offensively at a moment's notice.

The voice called out again, closer this time but from a different direction, as if the source of it was wandering aimlessly through the snow. "Pammy? Where are you?"

Eve didn't recognise the voice, but Ivy clearly did. Her eyes widened and she turned to Eve with an imploring look on her face, which clashed strangely with the territorial fire in her eyes. "Evelyn, forgive me. You need to stay here. She _can't_ see you."

_She?_ Eve wondered, and was about to ask when Ivy suddenly blew a kiss at her and a familiar pollen-scented darkness began to engulf her senses.

Once Ivy was satisfied that Eve would be safe, she moved her into a more comfortable position and descended from the tree, walking across the snow-dusted grass with a purposeful stride. With a wave of her hand, the trees in front of her parted and she stood there, framed by greenery, watching the small figure in the near distance stop when it saw her.

When she spoke, her voice, full of suppressed anger, carried easily over the silent park.

"Harley. What's he done to you now?"


	14. Chapter 12

Harley Quinn stood, shivering, a pathetic figure in red and black against a background of white. The jester costume she wore had been torn in several places, and the exposed skin underneath was turning blue with cold. "H-hiya, Red," she said awkwardly. She tried to smile but winced when the movement stretched a cut on her lip.

Ivy raised her eyebrows and bit her tongue, then stepped aside and gestured for Harley for enter the dome of trees. "Come in, Harley. And take that costume off."

Harley passed through the trees dejectedly, her head bowed like a puppy that knows it's done wrong. Ivy followed her in, silently cataloguing the extent of the cuts and bruises and working out what she would need to heal them. "Strip," she ordered again.

Off came the tattered costume, falling into a heap on the grass, leaving Harley standing in her underwear. By now she was starting to stop shivering, but she still looked wretched. Bruises were beginning to bloom in shades of purple and blue around her neck, on the tops of her arms, and across her chest. Her hair was matted, her makeup smeared. There was a dark crust of blood under her nose which had clearly dribbled down into her mouth before it had dried. Self-consciously, she tried to cover herself up, but one look at Ivy's narrowed eyes and pursed lips and her arms fell back to her sides. Feeling uncomfortable under the furious gaze of her friend, Harley tried to make a joke. "We gotta stop meeting like this, Pammy," she giggled. Her voice was hoarse, still not recovering from the obvious choking she'd had to deal with. The laughter in her tone died when she saw Ivy's jaw clench.

Ivy was having trouble not shouting at Harley. This wasn't the first time she'd come wandering to the park after being on the receiving end of an attack from her on-again/off-again psycho 'boyfriend', The Joker. Granted, it hadn't happened for a while, but that didn't lessen the raging anger in the pit of Ivy's stomach as she silently instructed Harley to sit down and clean the makeup and blood off her face. Her skilful hands made silent, graceful movements in the air, calling her plants to her, the ones she would need to mix the remedies for Harley's cuts and bruises. She worked without speaking, cutting and grinding and mixing special pastes and powders, while Harley sat curled up, her arms wrapped around her torso and her head bowed. Ivy cleaned the cuts and applied a thick salve that stung on contact, then dressed them tightly. The minutes passed in tense silence, until eventually all Harley's wounds were dealt with and Ivy was feeling a little bit calmer; but just a little bit.

She sat back on her heels and fixed Harley with a steely glare. "So what happened this time?" she asked, her tone deceptively calm.

Harley tried to laugh it off, but it only seemed more pathetic. "Oh, it was nothin', ya know," she said with a fake smile plastered on her bruised face. "Puddin' and I just had a bit of a fight 'cos he didn't like his Christmas present…"

"Did he tell you what he wanted?" Ivy asked, one eyebrow raised. She already knew the answer.

"Nah. He never tells me stuff like that." Harley was still smiling, but it was starting to slip.

"Of course he doesn't." Ivy shook her head. "That doesn't even…who am I talking about? Obviously it doesn't make any sense." She looked at Harley with eyes that blazed with anger, her lips pursed into a tight line. "And he beat you up because you didn't give him what he wanted, even though he didn't tell you what that was?"

Harley shrugged, like this was an everyday occurrence – which, Ivy hated to admit, it probably was – and it was barely worth discussing. "Hey, I've had worse. At least he didn't throw me out of a window this time, huh?"

"That doesn't make it any better! Dammit, Harley!" Ivy almost slapped her, but stopped herself and instead stood up and backing away slightly, in case she did something she would regret. "He shouldn't be treating you like this at all! He shouldn't be taking his anger out on you when it clearly has nothing to do with you! You're just a punching bag."

"Don't you say that!" Harley stood up, her tiny thin shoulders squared in a defiant stance. "My puddin' loves me!"

"Does he? Really?!" Ivy clenched her jaw as she rounded on her friend, trying so hard to stop herself from taking out her anger on Harley and doing exactly what she was condemning the Joker for doing. But really, she was…infuriating! If her time with Eve had taught her anything, it was that those who loved each other would never hurt each other! Loving someone made their pain into your own pain, even if you didn't cause it. "If he loved you, if he _really_ loved you, he wouldn't even _dream_ of _thinking about_ hurting you."

"Yeah?! And what do you know about love?!" Harley screamed. She walked up to Ivy so they were standing nose-to-nose, her blue eyes flashing with fury. "You seduce people left, right and centre, just to get them to do what you want! That's not love! You don't know anything about love!"

"I know a hell of a lot more than you think," Ivy growled. "When you love someone, you hate to see them upset, and when they are upset? Then, you do _everything_ in your power to make that better. The one you love should never be afraid to do anything around you. They should feel comfortable, confident, sure that you _always_ want them to be happy. They should be able to tell you anything, and not be judged like everybody else might judge them. And most importantly? It should never even cross their _mind_ that you would hurt them, because _that's not what you do to the one you love_." Her hands reached out and gripped Harley's shoulders, digging her nails in, shaking her to emphasise her point. "You are terrified of the Joker. You are always walking on eggshells around him, afraid that he'll lash out, even when you're not the one who's done anything wrong! You are in what might be the _worst_ kind of abusive relationship in history, and every time it looks like you might be breaking away you go running right back, because you don't even seem to think there's a problem! Somehow in your stupid little head, you've convinced yourself that he does what he does out of _love,_ out of _affection_. Ask yourself, deep down, do you actually, really and truly, believe that he cares about you?"

Ivy could feel her fingers digging into Harley's skin, probably leaving even more bruises to add to the already impressive collection, so she released her with a dismissive gesture and stared her down, waiting for a response. She was still waiting a few minutes later, but Harley wasn't even looking at her. Her bottom lip was quivering and she'd folded her arms around her body in a subconscious act of self-preservation. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again with a muted snap. Ivy nodded grimly.

"And you actually have the nerve to tell me I know nothing about love, when what you're comparing it to is so twisted and abnormal. You might have a few doctorates under your belt, Harleen Quinzel, but you don't know anything about the real world."

Harley lifted her head at last and fixed Ivy with tearful gaze, her big blue eyes glistening. "I'm….I'm sorry, Red…"

Ivy sighed. The anger flooded out of her, tension leaving her shoulders as she took a few deep, calming breaths. A single plant tendril curled itself up her body and rubbed her cheek affectionately. "So am I. But, Harley, listen to me…" she gently guided her friend to sit down on the nearby log before continuing, "I hate seeing you like this. Do you realise, the last few times we've seen each other have only been because you've needed me to heal you? At least once a month, you come here, in tears, trying to smile through the pain of whatever new injuries _he's_ given you. I hate it. I hate what's happened to you. And then…for you to try and _justify it_? To make excuses for him? It just…" She turned away and ran a hand through her hair, trying to collect her thoughts. Harley stayed silent.

"Do you remember when you left him for a few months?" Ivy said into the quiet.

Harley's mouth quirked up on one side, pulling at her split lip. "Yeah. Puddin' was real angry with me for that one!"

Ivy chose to ignore that last part. "My point is, Harley, when we were together, and you didn't think about what the Joker might do every second of every day, you were free. You were your own person, you did what you wanted to do. _We _did what we wanted to do."

"And nobody could stop us." Harley was smiling properly now, not a tentative pained smiled, or an awkward smile to cover up her inner pain, but an actual, genuine grin. "You've always looked out for me, Red. You're my best friend."

"And you're my friend too, Harley," Ivy said, "which is why I hate it when you come to me like this."

Harley hung her head. "I know…but it's so hard, you know? Mr J's always been there, right from the beginnin'; I don't know if I could just walk away forever. I'd be all on my own…"

Ivy shook her head and laid her hand across Harley's. "No, you wouldn't."

There was a pause. Harley looked up into Ivy's face, her blue eyes searching for something, Ivy didn't know what. The seconds ticked by and then Harley surprised both of them by leaning forward for an impulsive kiss.

It didn't last very long – Ivy pushed her away, shocked, gasping in surprise. Harley look confused, like she couldn't figure out the problem. She tried to take hold of Ivy's hand again but she snatched it away. "Pammy, what's wrong? I thought…"

"What did you think?"

"I thought…well, you were saying all that stuff about making the one you love better, if they're upset, and you always take care of me when I come here, and I figured that, well, that was meant you meant when you said you knew about loving someone." She trailed off towards the end of her speech, slowly coming to realise how wrong she must have been.

Ivy stared at her. "You thought I meant you? You think I love you?"

"Don't you?" The question hung in the air.

Slowly, deliberately, regretfully, Ivy shook her head. She had a horrible feeling that she knew exactly what would happen now, and despite all her power, she wouldn't be able to stop history from repeating itself yet again.

"Well, if it isn't me…" Harley swallowed. "Who is it?"

"I can't tell you, Harley." Ivy sighed deeply. "I can't anybody know about her, not even you. I have to protect her."

Harley recoiled like she'd been slapped. "I thought I was your friend!" she cried, her voice rising in pitch as the anger and betrayal hit her. "All that bull about you caring about me, and not wanting to see me hurt, and then you turn around and say you don't trust me?!"

"I don't trust _anyone_, Harley!" She hated saying it, knowing it wasn't true, knowing that there was one person in the world she really did trust, who was currently lying unconscious about twenty feet above their heads. "It's not personal, okay? Do you realise, the people we know, the people we _associate_ with, what they would do to any of us if they found out we had a weakness? How they would use them to get to us? I can't let that happen to Eve! I have to protect her!"

A horrible, horrible silence sank over them, as both of them realised at the same time exactly what Ivy had said. Harley's mouth was set in a grimace that only vaguely resembled a smile. "Eve, huh? Figures. This is her Garden of Eden, right?"

"Oh God…" Ivy instinctively tried to stop Harley from moving, but she caught her by surprise by punching her in the jaw and sending her sprawling onto the grass, then kicking her a few times for good measure. When she raised her head, blearily, dots dancing in front of her eyes, Harley was already several feet away, standing in a tense position, ready to bolt. "Harley, please…please, I am _begging you_. Don't tell anyone. Please, I can't lose her, I can't, I can't…" She dragged herself up from the ground, but Harley was still moving away, her expression unreadable.

"I do know something about love," she hissed. Gone was her usual perky tone, replaced by something cold and hard. "It makes you soft. The old you would have probably killed me by now."

Then she turned and ran, faster than Ivy could react, faster even than she could get her plants to follow – she was hovering on the brink of unconsciousness, unable to focus on anything except the chilling pool of fear in her stomach. "Harley!" she called desperately, "Harley, please! Harley!"

But she was gone, and there was no reasoning with her. She was crazy.

And now she knew about Eve.


	15. Chapter 13

**Hello, everyone! I'm so sorry it's taken so long for me to update. Lots of things have been happening – I've been working a lot, I moved house, and then there was Christmas, and now I'm jobhunting and looking for full-time work. But my writing will continue! The end of Ivy and Eve's story is in sight. Once it's finally finished, I'll be starting something new, so head on over to my profile and see what I've got in the running. You can send me a message if there's a particular story you'd like to see! Anyway, let's continue.**

Eve woke up late on Christmas Day, bleary from the fug of what might have been a nightmare, but was now too close to the edge of her mind to remember properly. The first thing she noticed was that Ivy wasn't with her; the second, that the canopy above her was open, and the grass was carpeted with thick white snow. Ivy's sanctuary was cold, quiet, and empty, as if nothing was alive there anymore.

Cautiously, she crawled to the end of the branch she was still lying on and called out into the silence. "Pamela…?"

Nothing. Not a sound, not a bird tweeting, not an answering call, not a footstep softly crunching in the snow. Tentatively she called out again, but still she got nothing in reply. A frown crinkled the centre of her forehead.

There was a rustling behind her, making her jump so she almost slipped and fell to the ground. It wasn't her lover, but one of her plants, which had stretched itself up towards her. It looked for all the world like it was waiting, as a person does when waiting for you to take their hand. Mystified, Eve reached out towards it, and it slithered up her arm like a snake, wrapping itself securely around her torso and lifting her off the branch. Hurriedly Eve pulled her cloak of leaves and moss more tightly around her shoulders, not wanting it to fall to the ground and expose her to the chilling air.

She almost squealed in shock when her bare feet landed on the snow. Hopping from foot to foot, she wished fervently for the first time that she hadn't abandoned her own clothes and shoes. It was so cold and painful that at first she didn't even notice when it _wasn't_ cold anymore – but when she did, she looked down and stared at the trail of grass that had grown under her feet, pushing its way through the freezing blanket of snow to give her a pathway to walk on. She crept forwards, still searching for signs of Ivy, of anything. The grass, incredibly, seemed to know exactly where she would be going.

If you'd been watching Eve creep through the silent, snowy glade, this is what you would have seen; a small, slender figure, wrapped in a long cloak of dark green that meant she was the first thing you noticed against the blank background. Her gait was cautious, and her head darted from side to side frequently and without warning, like a skittish animal that knows it's being watched, but it can't see what's hunting them. Warm breath burst forth from between her pink lips in short gasps, and her body was slightly hunched as she tried to keep the heat inside her. She did, however, still manage to be beautiful; she resembled a wood nymph, caught by surprise at the changing of the seasons.

This is how Ivy saw her, though her eyes were closed as she sank deep within her meditation, at one with the Green. She was in tune with the entire park, the entire underground web of plants that filled the earth beneath Gotham and beyond, and she saw everything the plants could see. The feeling was all-encompassing, the feeling of being stretched and pulled in every direction, seeing everything, hearing everything, through a gossamer veil of green. She was caught between the worlds, right then, and the only thing stopping her from surrendering completely to the Green, the thing that tethered her to the here and now, was the thought that her Evelyn was there, and she was looking for her. She wanted her, needed her.

Ivy's eyes snapped open.

Eve gasped, having rounded a corner of the glade and seen Ivy for the first time. She saw her lover held above the grass, in a pose reminiscent of Da Vinci's _Vetruvian Man, _plants surrounding her from every direction. The grass had grown upwards, curling itself around her legs and feet, and the branches of trees – maple, dogwood, ash, walnut, holly, spruce, pine, oak – reached from all sides to twine themselves in her hair, around her arms, cradling her torso, crowning her brow. Her skin was shimmering with an iridescent green glow, and her eyes held otherworldliness within their emerald depths, reminding Eve that no matter what she said, no matter what she believed, her lover was not entirely human. She stayed where she was, partly from apprehension and partly from awe. She watched and waited as Ivy slowly started to return to her, blinking her eyes once, twice, while her plants brought her back down to earth. The spot where her feet touched the ground was almost immediately free of snow, and instead a circle of springy moss spread out around her.

As the plants receded, Ivy reached out a hand and beckoned Eve closer. She watched her lover creep slowly towards her over the grass, patches of moss blossoming beneath her feet until the floor of the glade was carpeted in their delicate green softness. She watched her lover, and her heart began to break.

Because she knew this could not last.

When Eve reached her, she was trembling as she reached out and cupped Ivy's face in her hands. "Where did you go, Pamela?" she whispered.

"I was meditating," Ivy said breathlessly. There was a fine sheen of perspiration on her brow, as if being so in tune with the Green for so long had put strain on her body and mind. Eve's fingers reached gently up and across her forehead, stroking Ivy's dampened skin. "I had to find someone."

"And did you find them?"

Ivy shook her head. No matter how hard and far she had searched for Harley, there had been so sign of her. She had, however, half expected this; Harley had known her for a long time, and she knew all the places in Gotham where there were no plants, not even a patch of grass or a potted ficus. All the hiding places, beyond Ivy's web of Green, where she would be safe from her. It was infuriating and terrifying in equal measure, because now Ivy had not only no way of knowing where Harley had gone, but also who she had told about Eve. Had she even told anyone? Or had she come to her senses, calmed down, and decided not to say a word? It was impossible to know.

Eve's voice brought her back to the present. "Who were you looking for?" she asked carefully, as if she didn't really want to know.

Ivy sighed, taking hold of Eve's hands and clasping them tight, lacing their fingers together. "I've known her for a very long time. I thought we were friends, but now…I'm not so sure." She swallowed hard and took a breath. "When I first met her, she was Dr Harleen Quinzel, my psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. But now she's –"

"Harley Quinn." Eve's face had gone white. "Harley Quinn. Was that her, here, last night? Was that why you knocked me out?" Her widened eyes grew reproachful.

"I didn't want her to know about you," Ivy murmured, her voice wavering only slightly as she faced up to what she was going to have to admit to the woman she loved. "I wanted to keep you a secret, Evelyn, because I know what Harley's like. I know what the people I know are like. There's usually some kind of strange, tenuous truce between us all, unless any one of us has some something another one wants, or one of us has a weakness that can be exploited in some way…"

"And I am your weakness," Eve finished for her. She bit her lip nervously, chewing on a piece of loose skin.

Watching Eve, Ivy marvelled at how her face and body could be so expressive when she wasn't doing anything other than standing still. There was a tiny bit of residual anger in her eyes, left over from once again having her lover drug her against her will, but now she knew why it was rapidly receding. Then, there was the tension and fear, visible in the wrinkle between her eyebrows and the clenching of her jaw, the stiffness of her shoulders where only moments ago she had been relaxed and happy to be in Ivy's arms again. She was clasping Ivy's hands in a grip that was perhaps a little bit too tight, as if she couldn't bear to be apart from her.

"Do you regret this, then?" she asked suddenly, desperately. "Us? Me, being here? Me…loving you?" Her voice was shaking, as if she were on the verge of tears.

Immediately Ivy pulled Eve close and held her, stroking her hair. "Of course not! Evelyn, I love you. I don't ever want you to leave, you must understand that, but you're in danger now."

"Why would I be…nobody knows I'm here, do they?" Eve asked. There was a pause, the kind of pause that only comes when there are terrible things that aren't being said. Eve's hands started to tremble. Her voice caught in her throat, but she managed to choke out her next words. "_Do they?"_

Ivy, her eyes filled with regret and shame, nodded her head.

The change was instantaneous. Eve seem to retract and fold into herself, removing her hands from Ivy's grasp and taking a small step away from her. Her eyes grew wide and filled with tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. "Ivy," she said, her voice shaking. "What did you do?"

"I said your name." Ivy, too, was trying not to cry. Her words were filled with guilt and shame and heartbreak. "Just your name. And now Harley knows you exist. And she knows how I feel about you." She swallowed hard and reached out gently, then tried not to flinch when Eve subtly jerked away from her touch. "It was an accident, I swear, I'm sorry, Evelyn, I'm so sorry…"

A single tear started to make its way down Eve's face, a shining trail all the way down to her collarbone where it disappeared into the cloak of moss. The betrayal was clear in her expression. Horrible, uncomfortable silence thickened the air between the two lovers. Thoroughly ashamed, Ivy turned away from her.

She had ruined it. She'd had something wonderful, and she'd ruined it all with one careless slip of the tongue, when she'd been trying to be so careful. _Idiot_. She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to quell the roiling in her stomach. She, Poison Ivy, scourge of Gotham City (according to the various newspapers that loved to report on her antics and how her breasts managed to stay in her 'costume'), was never meant to love. That_ human_ capacity for such intense emotion had been stripped from her when _that man, _that _Jason_ _Woodrue_, had strapped her down to a cold steel table and irrevocably changed her biology. It was why she seduced people to get what she wanted; it was why she had never let anybody get too close; it was why, when she had finally managed to find some semblance of happiness, she herself had gone and broken it down. At that moment, Poison Ivy hated herself, for the first time in her life.

"What can we do?"

Ivy jumped. She hadn't even realised that Eve was still standing behind her. Slowly, she turned around again, brushing the hair out of her eyes. Eve was looking at her with a hard expression that she'd never seen on her face before.

"Ivy?" she said. "What. Can. We. Do?"

Ivy was staring at her, not because she didn't know what to say, but because she couldn't quite work out if Eve was angry or just trying not to cry. Maybe it was equal parts. Gingerly, she reached out once more, and this time around she was able to take Eve's hand without her pulling away. Good. This was progress. Maybe they weren't ruined, maybe things could be okay between them, but there was still too much at risk if anybody tried to hurt her. There was only one way of getting out of this that she could see where she could save Eve's life, even if it meant breaking her own heart.

"You need to disappear," she said at last, and Eve's eyebrows quirked upwards. Before she could get a word in, Ivy spoke again, her words starting to run together as she rushed to get it all out in the open before the worst happened. "You need to hide away somewhere, somewhere that nobody who wanted to use you against me could ever find you. Move back to Chicago, move to the middle of nowhere, I don't know." She ran a hand through her hair in exasperation. "Just…give me up, Evelyn. Please. Just forget me, because if I ended up getting you killed, I would never be able to live with myself."


End file.
